Is tax transparency associated with a better ESG score? An empiric look into the state of Tax transparency and ESG for OBX25

Abstract

In this thesis, our primary goal is to examine the state of tax transparency, then identify the relationship between ESG score and tax transparency performance for the Norwegian companies that make up the OBX25 index. To accomplish this, we conduct a documentary analysis of all relevant organizational documents and sources to assess the tax transparency performance of each company while we extract ESG data from the Refinitiv database. The newly introduced tax standard, GRI 207, is operationalized by assigning numerical values for each disclosure if the content of the disclosures is covered in organizational sources. In addition, we explore measurements of company characteristics to examine potential factors that may contribute and explain the tax transparency performance. Our findings show that the tax transparency performance for companies listed on the OBX25 index leaves a lot to be desired, with a relatively low compliance rate when an established framework for sustainability reporting, GRI 207, is utilized. This is evidenced by the average tax transparency performance of 22.6%. We find that companies that are larger, more profitable, and have a higher degree of public ownership, achieve the highest tax transparency performance. We also find evidence that tax transparency performance and ESG score is connected. When companies are sorted after tax transparency performance based on segments, our findings suggest that a better tax transparency performance is connected with a better ESG score. In addition, we find a low number of outliners in the sorting matrices, insinuating that most companies´ individual score does correspond with the ESG score.