The influence of general tax avoidance on capital structure has a theoretical foundation in the trade-off theory, but is relatively unexplored. Firms with an ongoing focus of general tax avoidance may be willing to have higher leverage and accept higher costs associated with the risk of financial distress to maintain lower cash effective tax rates. The empirical results in this study suggest that ex ante tax avoiders have higher average leverage prior to a refinancing, issue more long-term debt as a percentage of assets at a refinancing point, and have higher average leverage following a refinancing event. Cross-sectional regression results indicate that ex ante general tax avoidance is a robust positive influence on leverage. Overall, the results suggest that firms with an ex ante focus on general tax avoidance use relatively more debt in their capital structures.