Understanding tax avoidance becomes a matter of significant interest as it is not just a financial problem but also an organizational ethical and integrity issue. This paper investigates the influence of the board chair’s early-life famine experience on corporate tax avoidance in China. We find a negative association between board chairs’ famine experience and tax avoidance. Our channel tests confirm that the two perspectives of “ethical altruism” and “risk aversion” explain this negative association. Further, the effect of the famine experience on tax avoidance is more pronounced in firms whose board chairs had the famine experience in their early childhood or adolescent years, suggesting that experiences in the childhood and adolescent periods have a greater ‘imprint’ on human behavior. Our study fills a critical gap in tax research by directly linking board chair life experiences to corporate tax practices, suggesting that early-life experience is an important determinant of tax behavior.