Osayawe Favour OSAGBAKHOE

Tax avoidance is viewed as a legal strategy employed by companies to reduce their corporate tax payments to the government. This practice over the years has contributed to an unending disparity between targeted tax revenues and the actual amounts collected by the government, thereby hindering the countries progress by depriving government of the essential funds required for development. Against this backdrop, this study aims to examine the determinants of tax avoidance amongst listed insurance companies in Nigeria. It specifically assessed the impact of selected firm characteristics(firm size, firm profitability, leverage and firm age) on tax avoidance among the listed insurance companies in Nigeria. This study employed the ex-post facto research design and secondary (panel) data extracted from the audited annual report of twenty-one (21) insurance companies listed in the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) covering the period from 2012 to 2021(10 years). The secondary data collected were analyzed using a fixed effect panel regression technique. The findings revealed that firm size (FSIZE), firm profitability (ROA) have a negative but statistically non-significant influence on ETR, while firm age (AGE) has a negative and statistically significant influence on ETR, but leverage(LEV) has a positive but statistically non significant influence on ETR . Thus, the study recommends among others that tax administrators should focus more on older firms and less on younger firms because it found that older firms have more incentive to engage in tax malpractices.