Investigating Tax Avoidance Incentives in Corporations with Governmental Ownership based on CEO Tenure

The present study investigates the motivation for paying taxes in public companies based on the continuity of the CEO. Managers of public corporations may seek to increase profits and tax avoidance activities to provide a better image of the company and to preserve their personal position and interests. For this purpose, the data of the companies listed in the Tehran Stock Exchange for the period of 2007 to 2017 were extracted and the regression model of the pooled data was used to test the research hypotheses. The results show that state-owned companies have less tax avoidance than private-owned companies. Also, the second hypothesis of the study predicted that the continuity of CEO has a significant effect on tax avoidance. But the third hypothesis has not been confirmed by the simultaneous effect of continued selection of managers in state-owned corporations with higher taxation.