This study estimates the corporate tax savings from financial derivatives. I document a 3.6
and 4.4 percentage point reduction in three-year current and cash effective tax rates
(ETRs), respectively, after a firm initiates a derivatives program. The decline in cash ETR
equates to $10.69 million in tax savings for the average firm and $4.0 billion for the entire
sample of 375 new derivatives users. Of these amounts, $8.75 million and $3.3 billion,
respectively, are incremental to tax savings that theory suggests are a byproduct of risk
management. Collectively, these findings provide economic insight into the prevalence of
derivatives-based tax avoidance.