An Investigation of the Firm Size—Effective Tax Rate Relation in the 1980s

Given the recent emphasis on effective tax rates by policy makers and accounting researchers, this study investigates the relation between firm size and corporate tax burdens on a yearly and an industry basis. The analysis is conducted using five effective tax measures employed in previous studies in order to determine the degree to which inferences between size and tax burden are robust across these different effective tax measures. The results indicate that the relation is fairly robust across measures and, in instances in which the relation is not upheld by our analysis, sample composition explains differences in the observed relation between firm size and corporate tax burden.