Davis, Guenther, Krull, and Williams (2016)

Davis, Angela K., David A. Guenther, Linda K. Krull, and Brian M. Williams.  “Do Socially Responsible Firms Pay More Taxes?”  The Accounting Review, January 2016.

From the authors' abstract:  "We estimate the relation between measures of corporate social responsibility and (1) the amount of corporate taxes paid, and (2) the amount invested in tax lobbying activities using both ordinary least squares and a system of simultaneous equations. We find consistent evidence that corporate social responsibility is negatively related to five-year cash effective tax rates and positively related to tax lobbying expenditures. Our evidence suggests that, on average, corporate social responsibility and tax payments act as substitutes."

LK comment:  Uses MSCI/Compustat data

Link (working paper):  http://leeds-faculty.colorado.edu/bhagat/Guenther-2016.pdf

Link (published verison:  http://aaajournals.org/doi/10.2308/accr-51224?code=aaan-site