The Relationship between Tax Aggressiveness and Financial Leverage of Companies Listed in Tehran Stock Exchange

One of the most important factors in dealing with economic issues of countries is taxation. But in addition to taxation, methods of financing the firms are also important. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of an aggressive tax behavior on the relationship between effective tax rate and financial leverage at companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange. So, 90 financial companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange have been studied for the period from 2003 to 2014 (making for a total of 1080 company- year) and to analyze the results obtained from the application of Eviews9, STATA has been used and to analyze the relationship between variables, the panel data approach Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) has been employed. According to the findings, there is a significant positive relationship between aggressive tax (calculated as the difference between the overall effective tax rate and the cash effective tax rate) and the financial leverage. Moreover, the effect of the overall effective tax rate on the financial leverage associated with the aggressive tax policy is negatively significant. However, the aggressive tax policy does not affect on the relationship between the cash effective tax rate and the financial leverage.