Smoke and mirrors: Corporate social responsibility and tax avoidance—A reply to Hasseldine and Morris

This paper is a reply to a comment by John Hasseldine and Gregory Morris on the “Smoke and Mirrors: Corporate Social Responsibility and Tax Avoidance” paper published in Accounting Forum 2010: 34(3/4): 153–168. The original paper drew attention to the gap between corporate talk of social responsibility and actual practices, which promote tax avoidance/evasion. Instead of critiquing the Smoke and Mirrors paper, Hasseldine and Morris raise a number of random and often unrelated issues, including interpretation of law, tax statistics, regulation of tax agents, the role of accountants, policies of the state and the human rights of corporations, just to mention a few. This paper responds in kind and argues that many of their comments are ill informed.