We apply the linguistic relativity principle to examine the relation between future time reference in languages and corporate tax avoidance. Studies suggest that when languages require speakers to grammatically mark future events, speakers prefer immediate payoffs and engage in less future-oriented behavior. Considering that corporate managers trade off current benefits of tax savings against future costs of penalties/reputation loss, we predict a positive association between future time reference in languages and tax avoidance. We show that tax avoidance is more prevalent in Swiss regions where the dominant language has stronger future time references, and in US firms whose CEOs are born in countries with stronger future time reference in languages. In addition, using a large sample of 53,385 observations across 27 countries, we find results that are consistent with our within-country analyses. Collectively, our evidence suggests that linguistically-driven time perception helps explain the cross-sectional variation in tax avoidance.