Purpose – This paper aims to study the roles of CEOs, board of directors and accounting/auditing firms in the adoption of tax avoidance schemas.

Design/methodology/approach – A cross-national analysis with data from 22 countries is used toexamine the relationship between tax avoidance and the ethical qualities of the top leadership of theorganizations, the firm’s profile and the tax/legal system characteristics.

Findings – The results show that the board of directors is the actor that contributes more to control taxavoidance cross-nationally, whereas the CEOs’ role to contend this practice is less relevant. Theoutcomes for accounting/auditing firms reveal that the stronger standards these firms have, the moretax avoidance is observed.

Originality/value – The methodology (cross-national analysis) and dimensions examined (role of theactors/instances of discretional power) in this inquiry offer a novel perspective to the analysis of taxavoidance, as most scholarly studies have taken a national approach and have mainly focused onstudying the characteristics of the firms involved in tax avoidance.