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The Effect of Innovation on Corporate Tax Avoidance

A large body of literature examines the determinants of corporate tax avoidance. In this paper I examine a new determinant of tax avoidance: innovation. Firms with more innovation generate more patents. Due to information asymmetry between the managers of the firm and tax authorities, firms have considerable discretion in choosing which country the patent revenue is generated in. In this study, I predict that firms with more patents will choose to attribute the revenue from those patents to countries with low tax rates. Using a relatively new data source which contains data on patents, I find evidence consistent with my predictions. Specifically, I find that patent activity is negatively associated with firms tax rates. The results are robust to different measures of effective tax rates and to propensity-score matching.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-08142014-175532
Date28 August 2014
CreatorsGuo, Peng
ContributorsReichelt, Ken, Crumbley, Larry, Soileau, Jared
PublisherLSU
Source SetsLouisiana State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-08142014-175532/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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