This paper investigates whether
avoidance use more debt compared to non
as the reduction of explicit taxes for any reason, ranging from the benign reduction of taxes
stemming from incompatible rules for financial and tax reporting to the employment of abusive
tax shelters. Prior research has suggested that tax avoidance exists, may be
ongoing practice, and is associated with
avoidance on capital structure has a theoretical foundation in the trade
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.
tax avoiders have higher average leverage prior to a refinancing, issue
percentage of assets at a refinancing point, and have higher average leverage following a
refinancing event. Cross-sectional regression results in
is a robust positive influence on leverage.
focus on general tax avoidance use relatively more debt in their capital structures.
Keywords: tax avoidance, capital structure, leverage, trade
Journal of Finance and Accountancy
Tax avoidance and capital structure, Page
Christine Harrington
The University of Tampa
Walter Smith
The University of Tampa
U.S. public corporations with a strategy of
non-tax avoiders. General tax avoidance is characterized
an incentivized
different market outcomes. The influence of general tax
trade-off theory
. The empirical results in this study suggest t
more long
indicate that ex ante general tax avoidance
Overall, the results suggest that firms with an ex ante
apital trade-off theory