IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/corsem/v28y2021i2p908-924.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Giving too much and paying too little? The effect of corporate social responsibility on corporate lobbying efficacy: Evidence of tax aggressiveness

Author

Listed:
  • Woon Leong Lin

Abstract

Though lobbying accounts for a significant proportion of corporate political expenditure, comprehensive research on its advantages is scarce. Further, research findings have been inconclusive in quantifying political lobbying expenditures' rate of return. Using data from Fortune's America's Most Admired Companies (AMAC) with publicly available financial statements for the period from 2008 to 2017, this study delved into the tax benefits of lobbying using the dynamic panel system GMM and quantile regression model. This study found strong evidence that corporate lobbying is associated with higher levels of tax aggressiveness. The results also show that firms that spend more on lobbying in a given year pay lower effective tax rates. Additionally, this study revealed that the reputational effects of corporate social responsibility lead to the increased effectiveness of corporate lobbying expenditures. Thus, political lobbying affects tax enforcement, resulting in lower tax burdens for politically active firms. These results are consistent with the conjecture that firms with high levels of social responsibility and political lobbying are more tax aggressive. This study has addressed the need to quantify the benefits of lobbying and corporate social responsibility activities, especially in terms of lower tax payments and better financial returns to shareholders while still meeting the needs of non‐owner stakeholders.

Suggested Citation

  • Woon Leong Lin, 2021. "Giving too much and paying too little? The effect of corporate social responsibility on corporate lobbying efficacy: Evidence of tax aggressiveness," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(2), pages 908-924, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:28:y:2021:i:2:p:908-924
    DOI: 10.1002/csr.2098
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/csr.2098
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/csr.2098?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Behr, Andreas, 2010. "Quantile regression for robust bank efficiency score estimation," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 200(2), pages 568-581, January.
    2. Brooks, Chris & Godfrey, Chris & Hillenbrand, Carola & Money, Kevin, 2016. "Do investors care about corporate taxes?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 218-248.
    3. Claessens, Stijn & Feijen, Erik & Laeven, Luc, 2008. "Political connections and preferential access to finance: The role of campaign contributions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(3), pages 554-580, June.
    4. Grant Richardson & Grantley Taylor & Roman Lanis, 2016. "Women on the board of directors and corporate tax aggressiveness in Australia," Accounting Research Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 29(3), pages 313-331, September.
    5. Stephen Ansolabehere & John M. de Figueiredo & James M. Snyder Jr, 2003. "Why is There so Little Money in U.S. Politics?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 105-130, Winter.
    6. Gatzert, Nadine, 2015. "The impact of corporate reputation and reputation damaging events on financial performance: Empirical evidence from the literature," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 485-499.
    7. Plesko, George A., 2003. "An evaluation of alternative measures of corporate tax rates," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 201-226, June.
    8. Galvao Jr., Antonio F., 2011. "Quantile regression for dynamic panel data with fixed effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 164(1), pages 142-157, September.
    9. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Newey, Whitney & Rosen, Harvey S, 1988. "Estimating Vector Autoregressions with Panel Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1371-1395, November.
    10. Dang, Chongyu & (Frank) Li, Zhichuan & Yang, Chen, 2018. "Measuring firm size in empirical corporate finance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 159-176.
    11. Gupta, Sanjay & Newberry, Kaye, 1997. "Determinants of the variability in corporate effective tax rates: Evidence from longitudinal data," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 1-34.
    12. Blundell, Richard & Bond, Stephen, 1998. "Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 115-143, August.
    13. Koenker, Roger, 2004. "Quantile regression for longitudinal data," Journal of Multivariate Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 74-89, October.
    14. Eitan Goldman & Jörg Rocholl & Jongil So, 2009. "Do Politically Connected Boards Affect Firm Value?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 22(6), pages 2331-2360, June.
    15. Eitan Goldman & Jörg Rocholl & Jongil So, 2013. "Politically Connected Boards of Directors and The Allocation of Procurement Contracts," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 17(5), pages 1617-1648.
    16. Robert Bird & Karie Davis-Nozemack, 2018. "Tax Avoidance as a Sustainability Problem," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 151(4), pages 1009-1025, September.
    17. Hanlon, Michelle & Heitzman, Shane, 2010. "A review of tax research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 127-178, December.
    18. MARA FACCIO & RONALD W. MASULIS & JOHN J. McCONNELL, 2006. "Political Connections and Corporate Bailouts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(6), pages 2597-2635, December.
    19. Sikka, Prem & Willmott, Hugh, 2010. "The dark side of transfer pricing: Its role in tax avoidance and wealth retentiveness," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 342-356.
    20. Frank Hond & Kathleen A. Rehbein & Frank G. A. Bakker & Hilde Kooijmans-van Lankveld, 2014. "Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA)," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(5), pages 790-813, July.
    21. Ike Mathur & Manohar Singh, 2011. "Corporate political strategies," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(1), pages 252-277, March.
    22. Kim, Jeong-Bon & Li, Yinghua & Zhang, Liandong, 2011. "Corporate tax avoidance and stock price crash risk: Firm-level analysis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(3), pages 639-662, June.
    23. Unsal, Omer & Hassan, M. Kabir & Zirek, Duygu, 2016. "Corporate lobbying, CEO political ideology and firm performance," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 126-149.
    24. Carola Hillenbrand & Kevin Guy Money & Chris Brooks & Nicole Tovstiga, 2019. "Corporate Tax: What Do Stakeholders Expect?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(2), pages 403-426, August.
    25. Zimmerman, Jerold L., 1983. "Taxes and firm size," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 119-149, April.
    26. Waisman, Maya & Ye, Pengfei & Zhu, Yun, 2015. "The effect of political uncertainty on the cost of corporate debt," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 16(C), pages 106-117.
    27. Koenker, Roger W & Bassett, Gilbert, Jr, 1978. "Regression Quantiles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(1), pages 33-50, January.
    28. Roman Lanis & Grant Richardson, 2012. "Corporate social responsibility and tax aggressiveness: a test of legitimacy theory," Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Emerald Group Publishing, vol. 26(1), pages 75-100, December.
    29. Lin, Woon Leong & Law, Siong Hook & Ho, Jo Ann & Sambasivan, Murali, 2019. "The causality direction of the corporate social responsibility – Corporate financial performance Nexus: Application of Panel Vector Autoregression approach," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 401-418.
    30. Drope, Jeffrey M. & Hansen, Wendy L., 2008. "Futility and Free-Riding: Corporate Political Participation and Taxation Rates in the United States," Business and Politics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(3), pages 1-23, December.
    31. Chansog (Francis) Kim & Liandong Zhang, 2016. "Corporate Political Connections and Tax Aggressiveness," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(1), pages 78-114, March.
    32. Cao, Zhiyan & Fernando, Guy D. & Tripathy, Arindam & Upadhyay, Arun, 2018. "The economics of corporate lobbying," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 54-80.
    33. Roman Lanis & Grant Richardson, 2015. "Is Corporate Social Responsibility Performance Associated with Tax Avoidance?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 127(2), pages 439-457, March.
    34. Aggarwal Rajesh K. & Meschke Felix & Wang Tracy Yue, 2012. "Corporate Political Donations: Investment or Agency?," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(1), pages 1-40, April.
    35. Brown, Richard S., 2016. "Lobbying, political connectedness and financial performance in the air transportation industry," Journal of Air Transport Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 61-69.
    36. Roger Koenker & Kevin F. Hallock, 2001. "Quantile Regression," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 143-156, Fall.
    37. Duchin, Ran & Sosyura, Denis, 2012. "The politics of government investment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 24-48.
    38. Woon Leong Lin & Jo Ann Ho & Siew Imm Ng & Chin Lee, 2019. "Does corporate social responsibility lead to improved firm performance? The hidden role of financial slack," Social Responsibility Journal, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 16(7), pages 957-982, July.
    39. Chernozhukov, Victor & Hansen, Christian, 2008. "Instrumental variable quantile regression: A robust inference approach," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 142(1), pages 379-398, January.
    40. Athanasios Kottas & Milovan Krnjajić, 2009. "Bayesian Semiparametric Modelling in Quantile Regression," Scandinavian Journal of Statistics, Danish Society for Theoretical Statistics;Finnish Statistical Society;Norwegian Statistical Association;Swedish Statistical Association, vol. 36(2), pages 297-319, June.
    41. Manuel Arellano & Stephen Bond, 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(2), pages 277-297.
    42. Raymond Fisman, 2001. "Estimating the Value of Political Connections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1095-1102, September.
    43. Baruch Lev & Christine Petrovits & Suresh Radhakrishnan, 2010. "Is doing good good for you? how corporate charitable contributions enhance revenue growth," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 182-200, February.
    44. Windmeijer, Frank, 2005. "A finite sample correction for the variance of linear efficient two-step GMM estimators," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 25-51, May.
    45. Hill, Matthew D. & Kubick, Thomas R. & Brandon Lockhart, G. & Wan, Huishan, 2013. "The effectiveness and valuation of political tax minimization," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2836-2849.
    46. Anderson, T. W. & Hsiao, Cheng, 1982. "Formulation and estimation of dynamic models using panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 47-82, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Patrizia Gazzola & Audrey Paterson & Stefano Amelio & Daniele Grechi & Stefano Cristina, 2023. "The role of individual social responsibility and corporate social responsibility in the tax fraud war: A comparison between the priorities of Italian and Romanian consumers," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(5), pages 2265-2277, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Woon Leong Lin, 2019. "Is Corporate Political Activity an Investment or Agency? An Application of System GMM Approach," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-22, January.
    2. Woon Leong Lin & Chin Lee & Siong Hook Law, 2021. "Asymmetric effects of corporate sustainability strategy on value creation among global automotive firms: A dynamic panel quantile regression approach," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 931-954, February.
    3. Woon Leong Lin, 2018. "Do Firm’s Organisational Slacks Influence the Relationship between Corporate Lobbying and Corporate Financial Performance? More Is Not Always Better," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-23, December.
    4. Panagiotidis, Theodore & Printzis, Panagiotis, 2021. "Investment and uncertainty: Are large firms different from small ones?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 302-317.
    5. Karamti, Chiraz, 2019. "Lopsided effects of telecom reforms on mobile markets in the enlarged EU: Evidence from dynamic quantile model," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 238-261.
    6. Genya Kobayashi & Hideo Kozumi, 2012. "Bayesian analysis of quantile regression for censored dynamic panel data," Computational Statistics, Springer, vol. 27(2), pages 359-380, June.
    7. Adelino, Manuel & Dinc, I. Serdar, 2014. "Corporate distress and lobbying: Evidence from the Stimulus Act," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 256-272.
    8. Singh, Bhanu Pratap & Kannadhasan, M., 2020. "Corruption and capital structure in emerging markets: A panel quantile regression approach," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C).
    9. Dong-Hyeon Kim & Joyce Hsieh & Shu-Chin Lin, 2021. "Financial liberalization, political institutions, and income inequality," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 1245-1281, March.
    10. Miroslav Palanský, 2021. "The value of political connections in the post-transition period: evidence from Czechia," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 188(1), pages 121-154, July.
    11. Romero, Jorge A., 2022. "Lobbying and political expenses: Complements or substitutes?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 558-575.
    12. Bo Liu & Kemin Wang, 2019. "Uncertainty of political subsidy, heterogeneous beliefs, and IPO anomalies," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 923-951, May.
    13. Galina Besstremyannaya, 2014. "The adverse effects of value-based purchasing in health care: dynamic quantile regression with endogeneity," Discussion Papers 14-006, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    14. Zhang, Karen & Truong, Cameron, 2019. "What’s the value of politically connected directors?," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3).
    15. Hao Liang & Luc Renneboog, 2017. "Corporate donations and shareholder value," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(2), pages 278-316.
    16. Doan, Anh-Tuan & Lin, Kun-Li & Doong, Shuh-Chyi, 2020. "State-controlled banks and income smoothing. Do politics matter?," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    17. Paul Contoyannis & Jinhu Li, 2017. "The dynamics of adolescent depression: an instrumental variable quantile regression with fixed effects approach," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 180(3), pages 907-922, June.
    18. Ilona Babenko & Viktar Fedaseyeu & Song Zhang, 2017. "Do CEOs affect employees' political choices?," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1750, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    19. Colonnelli, Emanuele & Lagaras, Spyridon & Ponticelli, Jacopo & Prem, Mounu & Tsoutsoura, Margarita, 2022. "Revealing corruption: Firm and worker level evidence from Brazil," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(3), pages 1097-1119.
    20. Aflatooni, Abbas & Ghaderi, Kaveh & Mansouri, Kefsan, 2022. "Sanctions against Iran, political connections and speed of adjustment," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PB).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:corsem:v:28:y:2021:i:2:p:908-924. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1535-3966 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.