An empirical examination of the influence of e-commerce on tax avoidance in Europe

Abstract

This paper reports an empirical analysis of the influence of e-commerce business practices on tax avoidance. Using a sample of European parent firms in the retail trade industry from 22 different countries, we find empirical evidence that e-commerce firms are significantly more tax avoidant than traditional firms. However, as the latter have increasingly sought to avoid paying taxes over the period studied, the gap between the two firm types has been reduced. Our results are robust to different specifications of tax avoidance, time, and sample selection criteria.