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...

This study examines the nature of tax avoidance among loss firms. Using the methodology in Schwab, Stomberg, and Xia (2022) to identify and classify deliberate and intentional tax avoidance activities from companies’ effective tax rate reconciliations, we find that approximately 35 percent of...