Publication Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
1-2016
Abstract
This study investigates the relation between corporate political connections and tax aggressiveness. We study a broad array of corporate political activities, including the employment of connected directors, campaign contributions, and lobbying. Using a large hand-collected data set of U.S. firms' political connections, we find that politically connected firms are more tax aggressive than nonconnected firms, after controlling for other determinants of tax aggressiveness, industry and year fixed effects, and the endogenous choice of being politically connected. Our findings are robust to various measures of political connections and tax aggressiveness. These results are consistent with the conjecture that politically connected firms are more tax aggressive because of their lower expected cost of tax enforcement, better information regarding tax law and enforcement changes, lower capital market pressure for transparency, and greater risk-taking tendencies induced by political connections.
Keywords
Political connection, tax aggressiveness, tax avoidance, campaign contribution, lobbying
Discipline
Accounting | Corporate Finance
Research Areas
Corporate Governance, Auditing and Risk Management
Publication
Contemporary Accounting Research
Volume
33
Issue
1
First Page
78
Last Page
114
ISSN
0823-9150
Identifier
10.1111/1911-3846.12150
Publisher
Canadian Academic Accounting Association
Citation
KIM, Chansog (Francis) and ZHANG, Liandong.
Corporate political connections and tax aggressiveness. (2016). Contemporary Accounting Research. 33, (1), 78-114.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1705
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
http://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12150