CSR, tax and development

This article explores and critically examines the connections between tax and development on the one hand and tax and corporate social responsibility (CSR) on the other. It does so because, while there is increasing recognition of the importance of taxation to efforts to resource the state and to finance ways of tackling poverty, there is a surprising lack of attention to tax avoidance and evasion as a CSR issue for transnational corporations operating in the South, even among those companies that pride themselves on being CSR leaders. We review evidence of these trends, provide an empirical analysis of how leading firms deal with tax in their corporate reporting and make the case for including taxation as a new frontier in progressive CSR.