An examination of the impact of Tax Cuts Jobs Act on tax avoidance strategies of US firms

This dissertation has the goal to shed light on tax avoidance strategies of US firms after the enactment of the Tax Cuts Jobs Act in 2017. In the first part a literature review of tax avoidance strategies, definition, measures and consequences is presented. The second part is composed by the empirical part. After a review of the Tax Cuts Jobs Act main provisions and consequences, financial data through Orbis database has been collected for a sample of US and Canadian firms in order to evaluate the effects of Tax Cuts Jobs Act on the US sample. After the balance of data through entropy balance procedure, a difference-in-differences model has been adopted to evaluate the impact of the Act on GAAP ETR and ETR differential measures. Thanks to the significant drop of the statutory tax rate planned by the Act, an analysis of the conforming tax avoidance deepens and diversifies the analysis.