The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between audit characteristics and corporate tax avoidance and how board gender diversity (BGDs) moderates this relationship. Using a sample of 270 UK firms over the 2005-2017 period, we find that audit characteristics influence the corporate tax avoidance. Two of them (specialization and audit fees) had a negative effect; the other one (audit opinion, audit rotation) Have a positive effect on tax avoidance. We also find that BGDs moderates the effect of audit characteristics on corporate tax avoidance, except for audit opinion. The impact of the BGDs’ level increases as the presence of woman in the board escalated from 40 to 60 %, but then weakened at 10 % level. This study contributes to the existing literature and auditing practices by extending the auditing and tax literature on the examination of the moderating effect of board gender diversity on the relation between audit characteristics and corporate tax avoidance using the sensitivity analysis.

中文翻译：

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审计特征对公司避税的影响：性别多样性的调节作用

本文的目的是调查审计特征与公司避税之间的关系，以及董事会性别多样性（BGDs）如何调节这种关系。使用 2005-2017 年期间 270 家英国公司的样本，我们发现审计特征会影响公司避税。其中两项（专业化费用和审计费用）产生了负面影响；另一种（审计意见、审计轮换）对避税有积极作用。我们还发现，除审计意见外，BGD 可以缓和审计特征对公司避税的影响。随着董事会中女性人数从 40% 上升到 60%，BGD 水平的影响增加，但随后在 10% 的水平上减弱。