Thesis:

The relationship between political connections, investment opportunities and tax avoidance with the moderating role of social responsibility

Tax avoidance is one of the important issues that has been the focus of current researchers. Tax avoidance means a set of activities to reduce taxes. Tax avoidance often exploits weaknesses in tax regulations. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between political connections, investment opportunities and tax avoidance with the moderating role of corporate social responsibility. In this research, the collected data were summarized, classified and calculated by Excel software, and finally tested through Eviuse software. For this purpose, 119 companies (595 observations) were examined during the period of 2018 to 2022. From the point of view of the goal, this research is a part of applied research and in terms of nature and method, it is descriptive-correlation type. The research findings showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between political connections and investment opportunities with tax avoidance. In other words, as political connections and investment opportunities increase, tax avoidance increases. Also, corporate social responsibility weakens the relationship between political connections and investment opportunities with tax avoidance. This study suggests that the Iran tax administration should consider sustainability issues in reforming existing tax policies.

Keywords: political communication, investment opportunities, tax avoidance, social responsibility