We examine whether state-level corruption and corporate tax avoidance in the United States (U.S) are related. Using a sample of 36,078 U.S. firm-year observations from 1998 to 2014, we find that corruption is significantly positively related to tax avoidance. Our main finding is consistent across a series of robustness tests. In additional analysis at the state level, we observe that corruption is significantly positively related to corporate tax avoidance in states that have low levels of litigation risk, irrespective of whether the states rank high or low in terms of corporate governance, social capital, or money laundering. We also correlate state- and firm-level corruption with firm-level corporate tax avoidance and find that the interaction terms are generally significantly positively related to corporate tax avoidance. Finally, we show that state-level corruption and corporate tax avoidance are complementary across industry sectors. Overall, our results indicate that the broader state-level corruption (cultural) effects of where a firm is headquartered have significant consequences for corporate tax avoidance.

我们研究了美国的州级腐败与公司避税是否相关。我们使用1998年至2014年美国36,078个企业年度的观察样本，发现腐败与避税有着显着的正相关。我们的主要发现在一系列健壮性测试中是一致的。在州一级的其他分析中，我们发现，在诉讼风险较低的州中，腐败与公司避税有着显着的正相关关系，而不论州在公司治理，社会资本或金钱方面的排名是高还是低。洗钱。我们还将国家和公司级别的腐败与公司级别的公司避税相关联，发现交互作用条件通常与公司避税之间存在显着的正相关关系。最后，我们表明，州级腐败和公司避税在各个行业之间是互补的。总体而言，我们的结果表明，公司总部所在地所产生的更广泛的州级腐败（文化）影响对公司避税产生了重大影响。