Accounting for Deviance: A Qualitative Study on Tax Professionals’ Understanding of Corporate Tax Minimization

Corporate tax avoidance has become heavily criticized in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. The present study aims to investigate the neutralization techniques Duth tax professionals (n = 42) use to justify corporate tax avoidance. In doing so, we respond to a call for more research examining how contexts and types of people influence the use of neutralization.. Our findings suggest that the opacity and complexity of the context of taxation shapes the manifestation of neutralization techniques. Furthermore, professionalism appears to not only shape the choice of techniques but provides a broader context that anchors neutralizations.