Environmental Performance, Financial Constraint and Tax Avoidance Practices: Insights from FTSE All-Share Companies

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Main Authors: Sastroredjo, Probowo Erawan, Ausloos, Marcel, Khrennikova, Polina
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Sastroredjo, Probowo Erawan
Ausloos, Marcel
Khrennikova, Polina
author_facet Sastroredjo, Probowo Erawan
Ausloos, Marcel
Khrennikova, Polina
contents Through its initiative known as the Climate Change Act (2008), the Government of the United Kingdom encourages corporations to enhance their environmental performance with the significant aim of reducing targeted greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. Previous research has predominantly assessed this encouragement favourably, suggesting that improved environmental performance bolsters governmental efforts to protect the environment and fosters commendable corporate governance practices among companies. Studies indicate that organisations exhibiting strong corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, or high levels of environmental performance often engage in lower occurrences of tax avoidance. However, our findings suggest that an increase in environmental performance may paradoxically lead to a rise in tax avoidance activities. Using a sample of 567 firms listed on the FTSE All Share from 2014 to 2022, our study finds that firms associated with higher environmental performance are more likely to avoid taxation. The study further documents that the effect is more pronounced for firms facing financial constraints. Entropy balancing, propensity score matching analysis, the instrumental variable method, and the Heckman test are employed in our study to address potential endogeneity concerns. Collectively, the findings of our study suggest that better environmental performance helps explain the variation in firms tax avoidance practices.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08450
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Environmental Performance, Financial Constraint and Tax Avoidance Practices: Insights from FTSE All-Share Companies
Sastroredjo, Probowo Erawan
Ausloos, Marcel
Khrennikova, Polina
General Finance
Physics and Society
Through its initiative known as the Climate Change Act (2008), the Government of the United Kingdom encourages corporations to enhance their environmental performance with the significant aim of reducing targeted greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2050. Previous research has predominantly assessed this encouragement favourably, suggesting that improved environmental performance bolsters governmental efforts to protect the environment and fosters commendable corporate governance practices among companies. Studies indicate that organisations exhibiting strong corporate social responsibility (CSR), environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria, or high levels of environmental performance often engage in lower occurrences of tax avoidance. However, our findings suggest that an increase in environmental performance may paradoxically lead to a rise in tax avoidance activities. Using a sample of 567 firms listed on the FTSE All Share from 2014 to 2022, our study finds that firms associated with higher environmental performance are more likely to avoid taxation. The study further documents that the effect is more pronounced for firms facing financial constraints. Entropy balancing, propensity score matching analysis, the instrumental variable method, and the Heckman test are employed in our study to address potential endogeneity concerns. Collectively, the findings of our study suggest that better environmental performance helps explain the variation in firms tax avoidance practices.
title Environmental Performance, Financial Constraint and Tax Avoidance Practices: Insights from FTSE All-Share Companies
topic General Finance
Physics and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08450