Synonyms
Aggressive tax minimization; Aggressive tax planning
Introduction
In a purely economic view, corporate taxes reduce the profit that can be distributed to shareholders. Insofar as the owners of the company and the managers who run the company on its behalf pursue profit maximization, measures are implemented that maximize the present value of cash flows after taxes considering legal and reputational risks. Strategic and operational business decisions are made taking into account their tax consequences; for existing investment and production programs, opportunities are sought to represent them for tax purposes or to exercise tax options in such a way that tax payments are minimized. It is generally assumed that the owners or management comply with the relevant legal framework, i.e., do not deliberately violate legal regulations in order to increase profits.
For both empirical and normative purposes, it is helpful to define different forms of tax minimization or tax avoidance to...
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Lenz, H. (2023). Aggressive Tax Avoidance and Business Ethics. In: Poff, D.C., Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22767-8_1287
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