Do Socially Responsible Firms Pay More Taxes?

Davis, Angela K., Guenther, David A., Krull, Linda K., Williams, Brian M.

The Accounting Review · 2016 · Volume 91 · Issue 1

Abstract

We investigate the relation between corporate tax payments and corporate social responsibility. Because existing theory and empirical studies find inconsistent evidence on the relation between these constructs, we investigate whether the two activities act as complements or substitutes. We estimate the relation between measures of corporate social responsibility and (1) the amount of corporate taxes paid, and (2) the amount invested in tax lobbying activities using both ordinary least squares and a system of simultaneous equations. We find consistent evidence that corporate social responsibility is negatively related to five-year cash effective tax rates and positively related to tax lobbying expenditures. Our evidence suggests that, on average, corporate social responsibility and tax payments act as substitutes. Data Availability:Data are available from sources identified in the paper.

Keywords

corporate social responsibility, tax avoidance, Global Reporting Initiative

Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.