Guenther, DavidLi, Zhongyang (John)2021-04-272021-04-272021-04-27https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26180While prior literature examines the role of incentives in motivating top managers to engage in corporate tax avoidance, there is little evidence on the specific actions that managers take in response to these incentives. Motivated by the premise that a manager can influence a firm’s tax activities by emphasizing the tax function, I investigate whether four specific tax avoidance incentives studied in prior literature (financial constraints, equity risk incentives, hedge fund interventions, and analyst cash flow forecasts) induce managers to make investments in the firm’s tax department. Using a dataset of tax employees collected from the website LinkedIn, I find evidence that each incentive is significantly associated with an increase in the number of employees within the tax department. This association is stronger among higher ranked employees and employees with prior tax department experience. In supplementary analyses, I find that some incentives also induce managers to pay higher tax fees to the firm’s auditor and engage in tax lobbying. Overall, my findings are consistent with the premise that managers invest resources in the tax function when incentivized to avoid taxes. My study also provides assurance that the association between incentives and effective tax rates documented in prior studies is reflective of intentional tax avoidance behavior.en-USAll Rights Reserved.AccountingExecutivesHuman capitalIncentivesTax avoidanceTax departmentsElectronic Thesis or Dissertation