Corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, political connections, and tax avoidance in a developing country: A systematic literature review of Indonesian evidence

Abstrak

Tax avoidance is a central corporate-governance and fiscal issue in developing countries, where tax revenues are important but enforcement and governance quality remain heterogeneous. This systematic literature review synthesizes Indonesian corporate evidence on Good Corporate Governance (GCG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), political connections, and tax avoidance. Following the PRISMA 2020 logic, the review documented 14 records identified through Google Scholar and SINTA searches conducted with Publish or Perish, supplemented by Scopus and Web of Science verification. After screening and eligibility assessment, 11 primary empirical studies were retained and three records were excluded as out-of-scope or secondary/contextual literature. The synthesis indicates that political connections are the most consistently reported positive correlate of tax avoidance, although the relationship is not universal. Conventional GCG proxies do not consistently reduce tax avoidance in isolation, while CSR produces ambivalent results that are consistent with both an ethical-constraint mechanism and a legitimacy-shield mechanism. Firmansyah et al. (2022) provides particularly strong evidence: political connections and investment opportunity sets increase tax avoidance, whereas CSR disclosure weakens those positive effects. Measurement heterogeneity, especially differences among ETR, CETR, BTD, and related proxies, contributes to divergent findings. The review concludes with implications for tax-risk profiling, governance evaluation, and future causal research.