ABSTRACT Corporate tax avoidance is a recurring focus of policy‐makers, the media, activist groups, and researchers. This focus often centers on multinational enterprises' (MNEs) use of tax havens, with a wide body of research utilizing MNEs' tax haven use as evidence of corporate tax avoidance activities. However, the common assumption that MNEs operate in tax havens only for tax avoidance purposes overlooks the role tax havens play as homes for captive insurance entities, which allow firms to secure “self” insurance coverage but do not provide obvious differential federal tax benefits. When we remove the effect of captives on tax haven–based measures, we observe a roughly threefold increase in the magnitude of tax savings specifically associated with haven noncaptive activity. We document that nonfinancial firms' use of captive insurance occurs in approximately 11% of firm‐years and spans nearly all Fama–French 49 industries. We construct a haven captive use determinants model, with strong discriminatory power and compelling out‐of‐sample corroboration tests, that future research can employ to account for firms' use of haven captives. Our findings underscore the importance of separating captive and noncaptive‐related haven activities.

ABSTRACT: This study investigates whether the agency conflicts inherent in a dual class ownership structure are associated with the level of firms' tax avoidance. Dual class ownership presents a unique agency problem because insiders control a majority of the votes of a firm despite having claims to a minority of the firm's cash flows. We examine the level of tax avoidance for a sample of dual class firms and find that the extent of tax avoidance declines as the difference between voting rights and cash flow rights increases. We also compare the level of tax avoidance of dual class firms to a sample of propensity matched single class firms and find that dual class firms engage in less tax avoidance as the wedge between insiders' voting rights and cash flow rights increases. These findings are consistent with dual class ownership entrenching managers and allowing them to perform at a suboptimal level. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the paper.

ABSTRACT The trade‐off literature asserts that managers weigh the direct benefits of tax avoidance against the associated nontax costs. This literature implies each firm has a unique optimal level of tax avoidance that balances these costs and benefits. Our study is the first to document how quickly the average firm moves toward its optimal level of tax avoidance. We find that the typical firm converges toward its optimum at a rate that ranges from approximately 69 to 84 percent over a three‐year period, depending upon model specifications. Consistent with asymmetric levels of frictions across the tax avoidance distribution, we find the speed of adjustment is greater for firms below their optimal level of tax avoidance than for firms above. We perform additional cross‐sectional analyses to provide insight into some of the frictions that prevent firms from adjusting completely to their optimal level of tax avoidance. We generally find growth firms exhibit slower adjustment speeds and provide limited evidence that both multinational firms and income‐mobile firms exhibit faster adjustment speeds.

ABSTRACT We examine the effects of increased competition stemming from corporate tax rate cuts in foreign competitors' home countries on U.S. domestic manufacturing firms. We develop a measure of U.S. domestic firms' exposure to changes in foreign country tax rates and validate that the measure captures increased competition in the U.S. We find that, on average, U.S. domestic firms lose market power following declines in foreign country tax rates. We also find that, on average, U.S. domestic firms respond by increasing investment in research and development and capital expenditures and by improving total factor productivity. In cross-sectional analyses, we find the impact of foreign tax cuts is concentrated among U.S. domestic firms with low ex ante product differentiation. Taken together, these findings suggest that foreign country tax cuts escalate the competitive threat faced by U.S. domestic firms, and in response, U.S. domestic firms alter their investment strategies and/or become more productive. JEL Classifications: H2; H22; H25.

ABSTRACT We investigate why temporary book-tax differences appear to serve as a useful signal of earnings persistence (Hanlon 2005). We first test and show that temporary book-tax differences provide incremental information over the magnitude of accruals for the persistence of earnings and accruals. We then opine that there are multiple potential sources of large positive book-tax differences. We predict and find that firms with large positive book-tax differences likely arising from upward earnings management (tax avoidance) exhibit lower (higher) earnings and accruals persistence than do other firms with large positive book-tax differences. Finally, we find significant variation in current-period earnings and accruals response coefficients and insignificant hedge returns in period t+1, consistent with investors being able to look through to the source of large positive book-tax differences (earnings management and tax avoidance), allowing them to correctly price the persistence of accruals for these subsamples. Data Availability: Data are available from public sources identified in the study.

ABSTRACT This paper examines whether U.S. domestic firms’ investment decisions are affected by their expectations of market leaders’ tax-motivated income shifting. Market leaders’ financial reports can help peers evaluate industry conditions and potential investment payoffs, but income shifting obscures the geographic source of profits and reduces the informativeness of these disclosures. Thus, when peers expect that leaders shift income, they face greater uncertainty about the outcomes of their own investments. Consistent with the theory of investment under uncertainty, we find that U.S. domestic firms are less responsive to investment opportunities as expectations of leaders’ shifting increase. This reduced responsiveness is concentrated among firms facing higher investment irreversibility and those whose market leaders provide less transparent geographic disclosures. Our findings identify a novel spillover cost of income shifting and suggest that policies enhancing the transparency of multinational firms’ geographic reporting or constraining income shifting could help improve domestic firms’ investment decisions.

ABSTRACT We investigate whether tax avoidance becomes more uncertain as the rate of tax avoidance increases. We estimate a system of equations to demonstrate that as firms' pretax income increases, each additional dollar of potential tax results, on average, in 32.8 cents of tax avoided, which we refer to as incremental tax avoidance. Of the incremental tax avoided, 1.4 cents represent additions to the reserve for uncertain tax benefits (UTB reserve), or 4.3 percent of the total incremental tax avoided. We then partition sample firms into groups that prior research suggests engage in higher rates of tax avoidance, and examine the amount of incremental tax avoidance that results in additions to the UTB reserve. Results demonstrate that the percentage of incremental tax avoidance reflecting additions to UTB reserve is not larger for groups engaging in higher rates of tax avoidance, suggesting higher rates of tax avoidance may not be more uncertain. JEL Classifications: H26; M41; M48.

ABSTRACT Using the shadow insurance setting, we study the interplay between tax and nontax incentives in income shifting. Shadow insurance involves intercompany transactions designed to help firms meet regulatory capital requirements. However, prior to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), foreign-owned life insurance firms could save taxes by using shadow insurance to shift U.S. profits to tax havens. Consistent with expectations, we find that while nontax incentives appear to be the dominant factor behind firms' use of shadow insurance, tax considerations also played a role for certain firms. We also find that shadow insurance is associated with lower liquid asset holdings and increased credit risk. Overall, our results suggest that taxes were an important incentive for foreign-owned life insurance firms to use shadow insurance pre-TCJA. Moreover, in this setting, nontax considerations appeared to have motivated U.S.-owned firms' use of tax havens.

ABSTRACT Amid growing globalization, many countries have offered tax incentives to attract corporate investment. Prior research studies the role such incentives play in firms' location and investment choices. However, we have limited evidence regarding the role that uncertainty about the intensity of future tax enforcement plays in those decisions. In 2013, the European Commission (E.C.) abruptly began investigating the tax-ruling practices of several countries in response to allegations that certain firms received preferential tax treatment (“state aid cases”). We use this setting to study the economic consequences of increased uncertainty about future tax enforcement. We find evidence consistent with significant reductions in U.S. multinational enterprises' subsidiary investments within, firm input purchases from, and aggregate investment of U.S. firms flowing to targeted state aid countries. Specifically, for U.S. multinational enterprises' subsidiary investments, we find fixed assets declined by 1.7 percent of total assets, or $7.6 million per subsidiary. JEL Classifications: M41; M48; H25; H26.