Outside Directors, Corporate Social Responsibility Performance, and Corporate Tax Aggressiveness: An Empirical Analysis

This study examines the impact of outside directors on the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and tax aggressiveness. Based on a sample of 5,007 firm-year observations over the 2003-2009 period, we find that there is a negative association between the interaction effect of the proportion of outside directors on the board and CSR performance, and tax aggressiveness. Our additional tests confirm the reliability of our main regression results. Overall, our results indicate that the presence of outside directors on the board magnifies the negative association between CSR performance and tax aggressiveness.