Corporate Tax Avoidance and Firm Value

27 Pages Posted: 20 Mar 2005

See all articles by Mihir A. Desai

Mihir A. Desai

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Dhammika Dharmapala

UC Berkeley School of Law; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute); European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI)

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Abstract

Do corporate tax avoidance activities advance shareholder interests? This paper tests alternative theories of corporate tax avoidance that yield distinct predictions on the valuation of corporate tax avoidance. Unexplained differences between income reported to capital markets and to tax authorities are used to proxy for tax avoidance activity. These "book-tax" gaps are shown to be larger when firms are alleged to be involved in tax shelters. OLS estimates indicate that the average effect of tax avoidance on firm value is not significantly different from zero, but is positive for well-governed firms as predicted by an agency perspective on corporate tax avoidance. An exogenous change in tax regulations that affected the ability of some firms to avoid taxes is used to construct instruments for tax avoidance activity. The IV estimates yield larger overall effects and reinforce the basic result that higher quality firm governance leads to a larger effect of tax avoidance on firm value. The results are robust to a wide variety of tests for alternative explanations. Taken together, the results suggest that the simple view of corporate tax avoidance as a transfer of resources from the state to shareholders is incomplete given the agency problems characterizing shareholder-manager relations.

Keywords: Taxes, tax avoidance, tax shelters,book-tax gaps, governance, firm value

JEL Classification: G32, G34, G12, H25, H26, K34

Suggested Citation

Desai, Mihir A. and Dharmapala, Dhammika, Corporate Tax Avoidance and Firm Value. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=689562 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.689562

Mihir A. Desai (Contact Author)

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit ( email )

Boston, MA 02163
United States
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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Dhammika Dharmapala

UC Berkeley School of Law ( email )

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CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

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Munich, DE-81679
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European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) ( email )

c/o the Royal Academies of Belgium
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Belgium

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