Business Commons^™

Do Tax Directors Face Consequences From Tax Avoidance?, Liora Y. Schulman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I examine the association between tax avoidance and tax director turnover. Specifically, I hand collect the names of tax directors and explore whether tax directors face consequences from making tax avoidance decisions. This unique dataset allows me to identify the tax director, who is directly responsible for taxes, which are one of the most significant accounts, and who prior literature has largely ignored due to a lack of availability of data. I find evidence that the tax director is more likely to face consequences, as measured by turnover, when their firm’s effective tax rate is above their industry median’s effective …