The Effect of Tax Avoidance on Corporate Reputation and Its Relation to Firm Value

This study empirically examines the relationship between corporate reputation and tax avoidance, and investigates whether a company’s reputation can mitigate the negative market reaction to tax avoidance. Results from logit regression analysis of the 116 “Top of its Industry” enterprises and the 303 “Non－Top of its Industry” enterprises from 2008 to 2013 indicate that firms with a lower level of tax avoidance are significantly more likely to be at the “Top of its Industry” than not. Additionally, this study finds that firms at the “Top of its Industry” have less negative market reaction to tax avoidance than the firms that are not at the “Top of it Industry.” The contribution of this study is presented as follows：First, this study provides an understanding of the effect of tax avoidance on corporate reputation since no research has addressed the effect of tax avoidance on corporate intangible values like corporate reputation. Second, the results of this study have additional implications for prior literature that sought to improve our understanding of the effect of corporate intangible values such as corporate reputation on both tax avoidance and a firm’s value.