We hypothesize that, in their annual accounting reports, propertycasualty insurers allocate premiums from multistate policies to reduce total state taxes. To test this prediction, we exploit the industry's unique state tax disclosures. We examine firm-level data, collected from the publicly available, statutory reports filed with each state government. Reported premiums at the insurer-state level, scaled by incurred losses, are regressed on state tax measures. Consistent with tax-motivated income shifting, we find the premiumloss ratio is decreasing in state tax rates. The negative relation is greatest for insurers specializing in multistate lines of business.

We investigate the relation between CEO compensation and accounting performance measures as a function of ownership structure. We use publicly-held property-liability insurers to consider the relation for firms with diffusely-held ownership and use privately-held property-liability insurers to consider the relation for firms with closely-held ownership. We find a significant positive association between return on assets and the level of compensation for publicly-held insurers. Consistent with optimal contracting theory, we find no such relationship for privately-held insurers. Results suggest that within closely-held firms CEO compensation is less based on objective measures like accounting information and more on subjective measures.