The Effect of Advertising Cost on Tax Avoidance with Emphasis on the Role of Information Ambiguity and Ownership Concentration

The advertising cost can be seen as the company's effort to brand and present the image of a good corporate citizen who observes ethical norms. Ownership concentration as a monitoring tool and information ambiguity as an agency problem can also strengthen or weaken the result of signaling through advertising. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of advertising costs on tax avoidance with an emphasis on information ambiguity and ownership concentration. For this purpose, a sample including 163 companies admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange was selected purposefully for the period of 2013 to 2021 and using Eviuz software version 9, the results of the research showed that the advertising cost has caused the reduction of tax avoidance (based on three models of effective tax rate, book tax difference, tax shelter), information ambiguity based on the book difference model of taxes and tax shelters has caused an increase in tax avoidance and the interactive effect of information ambiguity with advertising cost has intensified its effect on tax avoidance, ownership concentration has caused an increase in tax avoidance (based on effective tax rate and book tax difference model) and also the interactive effect of ownership concentration and advertising cost has caused a further increase in tax avoidance (based on all three models), which indicates the opportunistic approach of the managers in the shadow of weak corporate governance and exerting more influence or greater alignment of the major owners with the managers in the strategic decisions of the company.