The influence of tax services provided by auditors on tax avoidance: evidence from Brazil

Abstract

This article investigated the temporal association between the tax services provided by auditors and the tax avoidance of Brazilian companies. A panel of non-financial companies from B3 was analyzed, covering the period from 2010 to 2017, through regressions for panel data. The documented results suggest that companies that use tax services from their auditors have a lower effective tax rate, incur a lower effective tax rate paid in cash and present a greater difference between the profit determined by accounting rules and the profit determined through tax rules when compared with companies that do not use such services.