Access to finance and corporate tax avoidance: International evidence

Ramzi Benkraiem, Safa Gaaya, Faten Lakhal and Merve Kilic

Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation, 2025, vol. 58, issue C

Abstract: This paper investigates the relationship between access to finance and corporate tax avoidance. Using a sample of 63,443 firm-year observations from 37 countries, the results reveal that firms suffering from limited access to finance are more inclined to engage in tax avoidance practices. This result supports the pecking-order theory and suggests that managers may rely on cash flows generated from tax-saving activities to finance their investments. The results also show that increased levels of financial constraints are positively associated with tax avoidance in the presence of high economic policy uncertainty (EPU). We also show that this effect is more prevalent in firms operating in countries with high government debt levels, and with weak investor protection. Our results are robust after addressing endogeneity concerns and using different measures of financial constraints, tax avoidance, and additional control variables.

Keywords: Tax avoidance; Access to finance; Financial constraints; Economic policy uncertainty; Government debt; Investor protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1061951824000740
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jiaata:v:58:y:2025:i:c:s1061951824000740

DOI: 10.1016/j.intaccaudtax.2024.100668

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation is currently edited by R. Larson

More articles in Journal of International Accounting, Auditing and Taxation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().