The Impact of Audit Characteristics on Corporate Tax Avoidance: The Moderating Role of Gender Diversity

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between audit characteristics and corporate tax avoidance and how board gender diversity (BGDs) moderates this relationship. Using a sample of 270 UK firms over the 2005-2017 period, we find that audit characteristics influence the corporate tax avoidance. Two of them (specialization and audit fees) had a negative effect; the other one (audit opinion, audit rotation) Have a positive effect on tax avoidance. We also find that BGDs moderates the effect of audit characteristics on corporate tax avoidance, except for audit opinion. The impact of the BGDs’ level increases as the presence of woman in the board escalated from 40 to 60 %, but then weakened at 10 % level. This study contributes to the existing literature and auditing practices by extending the auditing and tax literature on the examination of the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relation between audit characteristics and corporate tax avoidance using the sensitivity analysis.