Title: Corporate tax aggressiveness and corporate governance: the case of citizen firms

Authors: Khaoula Aliani; Sihem Bouguila

Addresses: Business Administration Department, College of Business and Administration, Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University, KSA ' Business Administration Department, The Higher Institute of Technological Studies, Tataouine, Tunisia

Abstract: Firms have an inherent intention to minimise their tax burden. These implicit or explicit plans may harm the reputation of citizen firms. Since they are under higher visibility from stakeholders, citizen firms have to adopt an ethical and responsible tax behaviour. The aim of this study is to analyse whether the tax policy is more/less likely to be aggressive in the best 100 corporate citizens. In this paper, the influence of social responsibility on tax policies has been meticulously explored by two methods: a combined effect and an instrumentalist approach. The sample is composed of the best 100 US corporate citizens during 2020. The empirical results reject the direct effects of the corporate social responsibility score and its combined effect with governance variables on tax aggressiveness. However, the moderation effect, which supposes an instrumentalist approach, was supported.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility; CSR; tax aggressiveness; corporate governance; corporate citizens.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSE.2023.127732

International Journal of Sustainable Economy, 2023 Vol.15 No.1, pp.26 - 46

Received: 28 Jul 2021
Accepted: 24 Oct 2021
Published online: 15 Dec 2022 *