CEO ATTRIBUTES AND TAX PLANNING OF LISTED FIRMS ON THE NIGERIA EXCHANGE GROUP

This study investigated the impact of the CEO attributes on corporate tax planning of listed firms in Nigeria, focusing on such attributes as CEO age, experience, financial expertise, and gender. The study employed a data set of 264 firm-years of firms listed on the Nigeria Exchange Group (NGX) over a period of eight (8) years, 2016 to 2023. A panel least squares estimation was adopted, and the outcome reveals that CEO age is significant but negatively related to tax planning, implying that as CEO age increased, the firm resorted to less tax planning. Generalist experiences of CEOs, as measured by the number of board committees they served on, were shown to be positively and not significantly related to tax planning, indicating that generalist experience is important for tax planning activities within a company, albeit not considerably. The CEO's financial expertise has a significant but negative effect on tax planning; the inference is that as the CEO's financial expertise increases, there is less tax planning of the firm. CEO gender was shown to have a negative and significant impact on tax planning. Implying that firms with CEOs as females were less likely to engage in tax planning. In the context of the key findings of this study, it is recommended that regulatory authorities keen to improve compliance with tax laws and mitigate the avenues for tax avoidance can focus their efforts on firms with more general experience and CEOs in order to reduce tax planning strategies of firms.