Purpose This study aims to examine how corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and corporate tax aggressiveness relate in Malaysia, an emerging economy in Southeast Asia. It also seeks to analyse how CSR performance in community, environment, marketplace and workplace themes relate to the tax aggressiveness of listed companies in this country. Design/methodology/approach This study analyses 182 companies listed in the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia from 2010 to 2012 using fixed-effects panel regression and ordinary least square regression. It uses current effective tax rate as a proxy for corporate tax aggressiveness and measures CSR performance using specially developed CSR performance disclosure index. Findings This study finds no statistical support that CSR performance is related to corporate tax aggressiveness in Malaysia. Similarly, there are no statistically significant relationships between environment-related and marketplace-related CSR performance and corporate tax aggressiveness. Nevertheless, community-related CSR performance has significant negative relationship with corporate tax aggressiveness. Workplace-related CSR performance meanwhile has significant positive relationship with corporate tax aggressiveness. Originality/value This study expands the current literature's focus on developed economies by examining the relationship between CSR and corporate tax aggressiveness in the setting of an emerging Asian economy, i.e. Malaysia. It is also the first empirical study focussing on this relationship among Malaysian listed companies.

Objective - Even with corporate tax avoidance being extensively studied, it is still lacking a single universal measurement. There is also a dearth of studies focusing on developing economies such as Malaysia. This study, therefore, analyses the correlations between effective tax rates (ETRs) and book-tax differences (BTDs), which are the most commonly used measures of corporate tax avoidance on Malaysian listed companies for ten years. Methodology/Technique - This study performs distribution, frequency, and correlation analyses on the ETRs and BTDs of the Top 300 companies listed in the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia based on market capitalization. The data used spans a ten-year period from 2010 to 2019. Findings - The results of the distribution, frequency, and correlation analyses show that both these measures are closely related gauges of corporate tax avoidance. Novelty - The results of this study provide further statistical proof that ETR and BTD measures of corporate tax avoidance are closely related. Its utilization of data from listed companies in Malaysia expands the current body of literature by addressing corporate tax avoidance practice in a developing economy. By concentrating on both ETR and BTD measures, this study's analysis is consistent with the broad continuum of corporate tax avoidance spectrum and significantly reduces the risk of warping its determination of tax avoidance level. Type of Paper - Empirical. Keywords: Cash ETR; corporate tax avoidance; GAAP ETR; permanent BDT; total BTD. JEL Classification: G30, H25, H26, M40. URI: http://gatrenterprise.com/GATRJournals/AFR/vol6.1_1.html DOI: https://doi.org/10.35609/afr.2021.6.1(1) Pages 44 – 53

While the topic of corporate tax avoidance has been experiencing ceaseless attention among researchers, its empirical aspect is still facing the challenge of constructing a single universally accepted measure of such practice. Due to the confidential nature of tax returns, most empirical studies have had to rely on financial statements information to developed proxy measures such as effective tax rates (ETRs) and book-tax differences (BTDs) (Hanlon & Heitzman, 2010). Nevertheless, these proxies possess their individual advantages as well as limitations. Such available choices may therefore cause confusions to the researchers in choosing the most suitable measure for their corporate tax avoidance studies. As the mainstream studies on corporate tax avoidance have focused mostly on developed economies like the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, there is a scarcity of such studies in developing countries (Salihu et al., 2015). The unique jurisdictional nature of tax laws and enforcement systems hinder the extant findings' applicability on less economically-developed countries, especially those highly dependent on their corporate income tax revenue which is especial true with regard to Malaysia (Mohanadas et al., 2020). Though not as abundant in numbers, extant published studies had found that Malaysian public listed companies were indeed being consistently tax-avoidant since the 1990s. Nevertheless, these studies had respectively employed only a single measure of corporate tax avoidance. Indeed, nearly all had used variations of ETR while only a few had applied BTD measures. Their mutually exclusive application of ETR and BTD measures could negatively impact their findings' ability to capture tax-deferring corporate strategies (Hanlon & Heitzman, 2010; Lennox et al., 2013). It thus worsened the risk of potential distortion in the results of tax avoidance level which would led to flawed conclusions being made. In view of the above, this study seeks to measure corporate tax avoidance level of Malaysian public listed companies for the years 2015 until 2019 using both ETR and BTD measures. Furthermore, this study aims to analyse how closely these two measure are related in their respective appraisals of the companies' tax avoidance level. Keywords: Corporate Tax Avoidance; GAAP ETR; Cash ETR; Total BTD; Permanent BTD.

Objective - Although corporate tax avoidance is a widely discussed topic in the literature, conflicts do emerge when it is analyzed through the context of primary corporate duty. Should companies, in managing their taxes, solely honor their obligation to increase shareholders' wealth or should they cater to the interests of all their stakeholders? Such conflicts are especially evident in the inconsistent empirical observations on how corporate tax avoidance relate to corporate social responsibility (CSR), which makes the dearth of theoretical analysis on this issue even more conspicuous. Taking into account the socio-political nature and human elements in corporate tax avoidance, theoretical analyses from social sciences' perspectives are becoming markedly crucial. Methodology/Technique – This paper critically reviews the extant literature for discussions on how corporate tax avoidance is influenced by the dissenting approaches towards primary corporate duty. Findings – By allowing an insight into how people act and the world they live in, these analyses form a constructive tool to rationalize and foretell managerial actions towards shareholders and stakeholders alike. Novelty – It focuses particularly on the theories that are widely used to lend supports for such approaches. These theories are the agency theory, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy theory. Type of Paper - Review. Keywords: Corporate Tax Avoidance; Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR); Theoretical Analysis; Shareholder Approach; Stakeholder Approach; Agency Theory; Stakeholder Theory; Legitimacy Theory. JEL Classification: G30, G32, G39.