Much empirical evidence is consistent with properly incentivized executives engaging in more tax avoidance. However, other studies provide evidence consistent with tax avoidance facilitating managerial rent extraction. We address these mixed results by reexamining the negative relation between...

We examine how different accounting metrics used to evaluate CEO performance for annual bonuses affect the level of corporate tax planning as well as financial reporting for income taxes. We predict and find that firms using cash flow metrics report lower GAAP and cash effective tax rates (ETR)...

We examine two competing explanations for the negative relation between equity compensation and tax avoidance documented in prior research. The first explanation suggests that equity compensation aligns managerial interests and reduces managers' incentives to invest in tax avoidance schemes that...

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 The “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA) lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent and repealed a long-standing exception that allowed companies to deduct executives' qualified...

As part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the US Congress repealed a long-standing exception that allowed companies to deduct executives’ qualified performance-based compensation in excess of $1 million. The purpose of this study is to examine whether Congress achieved its stated objective...