Many studies use GAAP effective tax rates (ETR) as proxies for tax avoidance and rely on the maintained assumption that very low (high) ETRs represent the greatest (least) tax avoidance. We provide large-sample empirical evidence on how well ETRs capture cross-sectional differences in tax...

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 exploit a recent law change to examine the relation between corporate taxes and executive compensation. The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA) lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent and repealed a long-standing exception that allowed companies to deduct executives' qualified...