Tax Avoidance as a Sustainability Problem

Abstract

This manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem. Tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities, but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance, organizational integrity, and society. Defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior. Sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily incorporate taxation. A variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti-tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices. This manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles, in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation, can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance.

Corporate tax avoidance: is tax transparency the solution?

“…Dowling 2014, Knuutinen 2014, Lanis and Richardson 2012, Yliönen and Lane 2015) attempt to frame tax avoidance as an issue of corporate social responsibility. Bird andDavis-Nozemack (2018, p. 1010) note that 'under this view, tax avoidance represents a socially irresponsible practice that is inconsistent with a firm's obligations to society'. Panayi (2014), however, argues that to say that companies engaging in unacceptable tax avoidance are socially irresponsible is based on too many generalisations and assumptions.…”

The Role of Gender Diversity on Tax Aggressiveness and Corporate Social Responsibility: Evidence from Italian Listed Companies

“…Specifically, the debate that attracted the attention of many scholars is focused on the study of a tax strategy as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) [1,6,7].…”

أثر ترکز الملکیة وحجم مکتب المراجعة علی علاقة ممارسات التجنب الضریبی بعوائد الأسهم ومخاطر الشرکات- دراسة تطبیقیة علی الشرکات المقیدة بالبورصة المصریة

“…(Grubert and Mutti, 1991;Klassen et al, 1993) . (Guenther et al, 2017;Firmansyah and Muliana, 2018 (Dhaliwal et al, 2005;Heitzman, and Ogneva, 2015;Blaufus et al, 2016;Rachmawati and Martani, 2017;Cook et al, 2017;Khurana et al, 2018;Inger et al, 2018 (Kim et al, 2011;Gallemore, et al, 2014;Ljungqvist et al, 2016;Guenther et al, 2017;Feller and Schanz, 2017;Bird and Davis-Nozemack, 2018;Francis et al, 2019;Kerr, 2019…”