Implementing the concept of corporate social responsibility: increasing the tax burden or tax avoidance

Abstract

Over the last decade, scholars have become more and more interested in the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and tax avoidance. This is because the relationship was ambiguous due to the scarcity of research on this topic. Generally, two perspectives prevail toward this relationship. Firstly, it is argued that CSR has provided tax avoidance and evasion safe havens, because many companies incorporate many of their commercial activities under non-taxable humanitarian and environmental projects. As for the second point of view, social responsibility is considered an incentive and a contributor to making companies more compliant with ethical standards in terms of absolute transparency by declaring commercial and non-commercial activities, financial revenues and taxes paid, and from a political point of view as an incentive to commit to paying taxes in ways that are commensurate with the tax laws imposed in the country in which they operate. In the research the authors are analyzing interrelatedness between CSR and tax avoidance from an academic and applied point of view.