James D. Brushwood, Derek Johnston, L. Kutcher, James Stekelberg
Part of the FASB's broader simplification initiative, ASU 2016-09 was issued on March 30, 2016 and became effective for all firms for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2016. ASU 2016-09 simplifies the accounting for the tax effects of stock-based compensation by requiring firms to record all related tax windfalls and shortfalls as components of current income tax expense rather than as direct-to-equity adjustments, as was required under prior guidance. Many observers note this change may introduce significant volatility and uncertainty into firms' ETRs. Consistent with this concern, we document that errors in analysts' “clean” ETR forecasts significantly increased among firms reporting a material ETR effect due to early-adopting ASU 2016-09, relative to other firms. Our results suggest that simplification came at the cost of a decrease in the predictability of tax-related financial information; as such, this study provides timely evidence on an important economic consequence of ASU 2016-09.
{"title":"Did the FASB's Simplification Initiative Increase Errors in Analysts' Implied ETR Forecasts? Evidence from Early Adoption of ASU 2016-09","authors":"James D. Brushwood, Derek Johnston, L. Kutcher, James Stekelberg","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-52247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-52247","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Part of the FASB's broader simplification initiative, ASU 2016-09 was issued on March 30, 2016 and became effective for all firms for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2016. ASU 2016-09 simplifies the accounting for the tax effects of stock-based compensation by requiring firms to record all related tax windfalls and shortfalls as components of current income tax expense rather than as direct-to-equity adjustments, as was required under prior guidance. Many observers note this change may introduce significant volatility and uncertainty into firms' ETRs. Consistent with this concern, we document that errors in analysts' “clean” ETR forecasts significantly increased among firms reporting a material ETR effect due to early-adopting ASU 2016-09, relative to other firms. Our results suggest that simplification came at the cost of a decrease in the predictability of tax-related financial information; as such, this study provides timely evidence on an important economic consequence of ASU 2016-09.","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44505600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
P. Bianchi, Diana Falsetta, Miguel Minutti-Meza, Eric Weisbrod
Under the Italian statutory audit regime, three individual accountants are jointly appointed to audit each client's annual financial statements and sign off on the tax return. These individuals can belong to the same or different accounting firms and through multiple and repeated collaborations they form a professional network. We use network measures of centrality to capture individuals' ability to acquire and apply tax expertise across clients. We demonstrate that clients engaging better-connected individual auditors have comparatively lower effective tax rates. Our results are robust to controlling for a number of client, individual, and accounting firm characteristics, as well as for alternative network connections between clients. We also use instrumental variables, individual fixed effects, and matching to mitigate the effect of endogenous pairing of clients and auditors. Our findings demonstrate that in a joint audit environment, individual auditor professional networks have consequences for tax outcomes. Data Availability: Data are obtainable from the public sources cited in the text and are available upon request.
{"title":"Joint Audit Engagements and Client Tax Avoidance: Evidence from the Italian Statutory Audit Regime","authors":"P. Bianchi, Diana Falsetta, Miguel Minutti-Meza, Eric Weisbrod","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-52151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-52151","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Under the Italian statutory audit regime, three individual accountants are jointly appointed to audit each client's annual financial statements and sign off on the tax return. These individuals can belong to the same or different accounting firms and through multiple and repeated collaborations they form a professional network. We use network measures of centrality to capture individuals' ability to acquire and apply tax expertise across clients. We demonstrate that clients engaging better-connected individual auditors have comparatively lower effective tax rates. Our results are robust to controlling for a number of client, individual, and accounting firm characteristics, as well as for alternative network connections between clients. We also use instrumental variables, individual fixed effects, and matching to mitigate the effect of endogenous pairing of clients and auditors. Our findings demonstrate that in a joint audit environment, individual auditor professional networks have consequences for tax outcomes.\u0000 Data Availability: Data are obtainable from the public sources cited in the text and are available upon request.","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49045057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Donna D. Bobek, Derek Dalton, Amy M. Hageman, Robin R. Radtke
This paper is a descriptive exploration of the under-researched area of contentious interactions between tax professionals in public accounting and their clients. We collect data in two waves. First, we employ an experiential questionnaire (EQ) to obtain rich, detailed data about actual contentious client interactions experienced by tax professionals. Second, we conduct a follow-up survey based on the results of the EQ to provide additional insight. We find that tax professionals often employ arguments relating to possible taxing authority (e.g., Internal Revenue Service) actions and the technical merits of the tax position to persuade their clients. We also provide additional details about the types of contentious issues tax professionals experience and how these issues are resolved. Importantly, our results point to a need for more training on how to deal with contentious issues, as most professionals strongly believe training is needed, even though few have actually received training. Data Availability: Contact authors.
{"title":"An Experiential Investigation of Tax Professionals' Contentious Interactions with Clients","authors":"Donna D. Bobek, Derek Dalton, Amy M. Hageman, Robin R. Radtke","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-52174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-52174","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This paper is a descriptive exploration of the under-researched area of contentious interactions between tax professionals in public accounting and their clients. We collect data in two waves. First, we employ an experiential questionnaire (EQ) to obtain rich, detailed data about actual contentious client interactions experienced by tax professionals. Second, we conduct a follow-up survey based on the results of the EQ to provide additional insight. We find that tax professionals often employ arguments relating to possible taxing authority (e.g., Internal Revenue Service) actions and the technical merits of the tax position to persuade their clients. We also provide additional details about the types of contentious issues tax professionals experience and how these issues are resolved. Importantly, our results point to a need for more training on how to deal with contentious issues, as most professionals strongly believe training is needed, even though few have actually received training.\u0000 Data Availability: Contact authors.","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41285243","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in 2017, represents the most comprehensive revision of the U.S. income tax since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86). Although the TCJA shares many features with TRA86—corporate tax rate cuts, increasing the standard deduction, cutting back on deductions—it sharply differs in that it is neither revenue neutral nor distributionally neutral, both aspects of which are troubling in light of the large long-run federal fiscal imbalance and rising income inequality. Regardless of one's normative evaluation, the TCJA provides scores of natural experiments that can inform us about the consequences of tax changes on a wide range of economic behaviors.
{"title":"Tax Reform and Tax Experts","authors":"J. Slemrod","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-52143","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-52143","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in 2017, represents the most comprehensive revision of the U.S. income tax since the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86). Although the TCJA shares many features with TRA86—corporate tax rate cuts, increasing the standard deduction, cutting back on deductions—it sharply differs in that it is neither revenue neutral nor distributionally neutral, both aspects of which are troubling in light of the large long-run federal fiscal imbalance and rising income inequality. Regardless of one's normative evaluation, the TCJA provides scores of natural experiments that can inform us about the consequences of tax changes on a wide range of economic behaviors.","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47855883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT: Prior studies debate whether the temporary tax holiday provided by the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA) increased firm spending on domestic investment. Since internal equity is a...
{"title":"Do Firms Do What They Say? The Effect of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 on R&D Spending","authors":"Q. Dong, Xin Zhao","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-51879","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-51879","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Prior studies debate whether the temporary tax holiday provided by the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA) increased firm spending on domestic investment. Since internal equity is a...","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44326146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Inger, Michele D. Meckfessel, Mi Zhou, Weiguo Fan
ABSTRACT: Due to the proprietary nature of tax returns, the tax footnote is the primary source of information for stakeholders about a firm's tax position. However, studies suggest the tax authorit...
{"title":"An Examination of the Impact of Tax Avoidance on the Readability of Tax Footnotes","authors":"K. Inger, Michele D. Meckfessel, Mi Zhou, Weiguo Fan","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-51812","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-51812","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: Due to the proprietary nature of tax returns, the tax footnote is the primary source of information for stakeholders about a firm's tax position. However, studies suggest the tax authorit...","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42360715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Deferred Tax Asset Valuation Allowance and Firm Creditworthiness","authors":"Luke Watson","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-10557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-10557","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43447334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT: We examine empirically whether the manner of risk-taking in which firms engage is associated with aggressive reporting practices. Theoretical and anecdotal evidence suggests that firms face a trade-off between risk-taking and managerial opportunism as they seek to produce higher returns. In the period before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), we find that firms with more risk-taking through external asset growth are more likely to engage in aggressive reporting, but the reverse is true for firms with a practice of risk-taking through organic growth. Consistent with evidence in prior research on the improved quality of financial reporting after SOX, the positive association between a practice of risk-taking through asset growth and aggressive reporting is attenuated in the post-SOX period.
{"title":"Are Corporate Risk-Taking Practices Indicative of Aggressive Reporting Practices?","authors":"M. M. Frank, Luann J. Lynch, S. Rego, Rong Zhao","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-51809","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-51809","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: We examine empirically whether the manner of risk-taking in which firms engage is associated with aggressive reporting practices. Theoretical and anecdotal evidence suggests that firms face a trade-off between risk-taking and managerial opportunism as they seek to produce higher returns. In the period before the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), we find that firms with more risk-taking through external asset growth are more likely to engage in aggressive reporting, but the reverse is true for firms with a practice of risk-taking through organic growth. Consistent with evidence in prior research on the improved quality of financial reporting after SOX, the positive association between a practice of risk-taking through asset growth and aggressive reporting is attenuated in the post-SOX period.","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45579495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT Public company LIFO reserves fell from 2012 to 2015, a time when commodity prices generally fell, and LIFO reserves and commodity prices both rose moderately in 2016. Using a combination o...
{"title":"Estimating the Potential Revenue Impact of Taxing LIFO Reserves in the Current Low Commodity Price Environment","authors":"D. Tinkelman, Christine Tan","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-51992","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-51992","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Public company LIFO reserves fell from 2012 to 2015, a time when commodity prices generally fell, and LIFO reserves and commodity prices both rose moderately in 2016. Using a combination o...","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68958224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ABSTRACT Interest in corporate tax planning has accelerated in recent years as a combination of political, economic, and technological factors have fueled the public's awareness of corporate tax ac...
近年来，随着政治、经济和技术因素的结合，公众对企业税收筹划的认识加快了对企业税收筹划的兴趣。
{"title":"Perspectives on Corporate Tax Planning: Observations from the Past Decade","authors":"Jaron H. Wilde, R. Wilson","doi":"10.2308/ATAX-51993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2308/ATAX-51993","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Interest in corporate tax planning has accelerated in recent years as a combination of political, economic, and technological factors have fueled the public's awareness of corporate tax ac...","PeriodicalId":45477,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the American Taxation Association","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68958291","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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