This study examines the effect of three measures of corporate social responsibility (CSR) — corporate governance, community and diversity on tax avoidance in firms that use auditor‐provided tax services. This is one of the first studies, to our knowledge, to empirically relate tax avoidance, tax management and CSR literature. By separating the strengths and concerns for each CSR measure, we are able to analyze the effects of a firm's negative and positive social actions on tax avoidance. We find that the interaction of community concerns with tax management fees positively affects both GAAP and Cash ETR, while the interaction of corporate governance strengths and diversity concerns with tax management fees negatively affects Cash ETR. Our results are similar when we use Excess ETR that is not explained by firm specifics. We find additional evidence that CSR affects tax avoidance when we divide firms into portfolios based on CSR levels. Our findings suggest that future studies on tax avoidance and tax management should incorporate CSR.

This study addresses the recent concerns in the capital structure literature about the reliability of tests of the target-following behavior. Using a novel testing strategy, we examine whether and to what extent firms' financing choices–rather than the movement of their debt ratios per se – concur with the target-following behavior. We find that firms' financing decisions are not generally consistent with systematic target-following. Our results remain similar when we examine an extended period of time and also when we consider that firms may have a range of target debt ratios rather than a unique target or varying financial constraints. Our results are also robust to different target specifications and our methodology can reliably distinguish the target behavior from random financing. Further tests also confirm our results by suggesting that the firms' financing decisions are not primarily driven by deviations from the firms' target debt ratios.

We examine corporate tax avoidance of firms around addition to the S&P 500 index. We find that corporate tax avoidance for firms at high levels of tax avoidance decreases after index addition, whereas tax avoidance for firms at low levels of tax avoidance increases after index addition. We disentangle the impact of changing governance practices from that of declining investment opportunities. Our findings indicate that the changes in tax avoidance can be attributed to improving governance practices, specifically higher institutional ownership and executive compensations, and this impact is above and beyond the changes in growth opportunities of index firms.

Owning valuable brands enhances the financial well-being of firms not only through increased revenues and profitability but also by mitigating agency problems, earnings management, and financial reporting irregularities. Firms with high brand equity are less likely to have income-inflating discretionary accruals, announce earnings restatements, or experience SEC investigations. Brand equity reduces the likelihood of manipulation through incentive and opportunity channels, which we capture in CEO characteristics and compensation, and corporate governance measures. Brand equity reduces the likelihood of financial reporting irregularities more for durable goods firms and firms with shorter-tenured CEOs, as the latter are most vulnerable to performance pressures. (JEL G31, G34, M31, M37, M41, M42) Received September 28, 2019; editorial decision May 27, 2020 by Editor Isil Erel.