There is an on-going debate in the literature about the costs and benefits of conforming book and taxable income. Proponents argue that increased book-tax conformity will reduce aggressive financial reporting because managing earnings up increases taxes and will curtail abusive tax shelters...

This study examines the effect of managers' career concerns on tax avoidance using the staggered recognition by state courts of the Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine (IDD), a trade secret protection doctrine which places greater restrictions on managers from joining or forming a rival company. We...

We examine whether employee perceptions of managers and firms fall following tax avoidance news. Using S&P 500 firms and generalized difference-in-differences specifications, we find that tax avoidance news negatively affects employee perceptions of managers and firms. In cross-sectional tests,...

We exploit an exogenous shock to analyst coverage as a result of brokerage house mergers and closures to examine whether financial analysts influence the tax-planning activities of the firms they cover. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that, on average, firms affected by broker...

Harris and O’Brien (2018) investigate whether U.S. tax policy distorts U.S. multinationals’ (MNCs) investment. They find that MNCs facing higher repatriation tax costs engage in fewer domestic acquisitions. The study re-examines the results in two prior studies that found no effect (Hanlon...

We argue that political connections help financially constrained firms access external financing and consequently reduce their incentives to use tax planning as a source of internal financing. Consistent with this argument, we find that after a plausibly exogenous increase in political...

In a broad sample of publicly traded firms over the period 1988−2017, we observe that the share of firms reporting pre-tax book losses increased from about 20 to 35%. Of those loss firms, on aver-age 68% have positive cash tax payments (taxpaying loss firms). The amount of taxes paid by these...

When reporting after-tax non-GAAP earnings, firms are required to adjust for the tax effects of exclusions. Since 2010, the SEC has issued and updated Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (hereafter, C&DIs) which specifically require firms to disclose the tax effects of exclusions. We...

We examine the effects of the July 2021 expansion of the Child Tax Credit (CTC). We analyze detailed transactions data for 2019 through September 2021, utilizing a difference-in-differences design, and controlling for state-time specific conditions. We find that recipients of expanded CTC...

Income taxes are a major expense for profitable corporations, oftentimes 25 percent or more of pretax income. This study exploits a setting – the market for corporate control – to test competing agency-based and risk-based explanations of corporate tax planning. Exploiting the staggered...