We investigate whether firms use pretax cash flow freed-up by tax avoidance to make real investments. We expect uncertainty about tax avoidance to affect how this cash is used, and predict that firms facing low (high) financial constraints will use more of this cash for real investments...

While tax avoidance strategies result in greater after-tax cash flows, they can involve uncertain future outcomes, which can impose significant costs on firms. Thus, the extent to which tax avoidance increases firm risk is unclear. This paper re-examines the relation between tax avoidance and...

Global tax enforcement has received increased attention since the Financial Crisis, with much stated focus on curbing perceived harmful tax practices of multinational entities. Yet multinationals can avoid tax in multiple countries whereas domestic firms cannot. We therefore examine whether...

We use data on individual investors' stock holdings and retail trades to investigate whether corporate tax avoidance affects the willingness of individual investors to own stock. Consistent with corporate tax avoidance increasing the perceived risk of owning stock and the costs of processing...

We investigate whether low Cash ETRs are associated with two distinct effects — tax avoidance and low earnings quality — and if so, whether the two effects can be separated. Separating these effects is important: if upward earnings management is driving low Cash ETRs, inferences based on tax...

We use data envelopment analysis (DEA) to develop a measure of effective tax planning that is theoretically aligned with the Scholes-Wolfson paradigm and captures how efficiently firms maximize after-tax returns given their operating, investing, and financing decisions. We then (1) document the...

We test whether tax avoidance strategies are associated with greater firm risk. We find that low tax rates tend to be more persistent than high tax rates and that measures of tax avoidance commonly used in the literature are generally not associated with either future tax rate volatility or...