Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Tax Avoidance

Nowadays, there have been many literatures on separate areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate tax avoidance. Nevertheless, the academic community is relatively less concerned with the link between the two. This thesis examines the correlation between CSR and corporate tax avoidance. According to a sample of 625 observations of UK listed firms between 2013 and 2017, I discover that in general, the CSR score is negatively correlated with effective tax rate (ETR). This shows that the higher the corporate CSR score is related to the higher the degree of corporate tax avoidance. It can be seen that this research result is different from previous research, most studies have found that CSR is negatively associated with corporate tax avoidance. Moreover, the correlation between CSR and corporate tax avoidance in different industries in the UK is also estimated in this thesis. I find that corporate tax avoidance is positively affected by CSR activities in communications, consumer discretionary, industrials and energy industries while corporate tax avoidance is negatively influenced by CSR activities in consumer staples, health care, materials, technology and utilities industries. Although these results do not appear to be significantly correlated in each industry, it may be because the number of samples is not sufficient. All in all, this study provides new insights into the link between CSR and corporate tax avoidance in the UK company