When Tax Avoidance Meets Sustainability: ESG Disclosure and Firms’ Cost of Debt

Understanding the factors that shape firms’ borrowing costs has become increasingly important amid growing concerns about corporate transparency, sustainability, and tax practices. Specifically, the study investigates the relationship between tax avoidance (TA) and the cost of debt (CoD) among non-financial firms listed on an emerging Stock Exchange, while examining the moderating effect of environmental, social, and governance disclosure (ESG disclosure) based on the Panel-Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) approach. The findings indicate a significant positive association between TA and CoD, suggesting that lenders perceive aggressive tax practices as a source of additional risk, which consequently increases borrowing costs. The results further show that ESG disclosure plays a moderating role in this relationship, as the positive effect of TA on borrowing costs becomes weaker among firms with higher levels of ESG disclosure. This implies that stronger ESG disclosure improves transparency and alleviates creditors’ concerns about firms’ tax-related behavior. The findings were further validated through robustness checks using alternative CoD measures, fixed-effects regression, and dynamic panel GMM estimations to address endogeneity concerns. The study contributes to the literature by providing evidence from an emerging market and highlighting the role of ESG disclosure in mitigating the negative financial effects of TA.