The Relationship between Components of Ownership Structure and Tax Aggressiveness and moderating role of Firms’ Financial Performance

The actions of managers to apply tax aggressive policies are increasing and companies continue to take the action as long as the costs of these policies are not overpowered the benefits. Present study investigates the relationship between ownership structure and tax aggressive policies. The sample firms includes 170 listed companies in Tehran stock Exchange over the years 2009-2014. The first three hypotheses are developed to test the relationship between components of ownership structure and tax policies, and forth hypothesis tests moderating role of firms’ performance. The results indicate significant negative relationship between public and institutional ownership and tax aggressive policies, whereas there is insignificant relationship between private ownership with tax aggressive policies. Moreover the result indicates that by increasing in institutional and public ownership, managers decrease tax aggressiveness but increase in private ownership do not affect managers’ aggressive policies. In the other hand the effect of ownership structure on tax policies in strong firms is highly take place.