We provide evidence of the final, immediate financial statement impact of some of the major provisions of the 2017 U.S. tax law changes, commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). We also provide evidence on the accuracy of companies' estimates. Using hand-collected financial...

This study examines the nature of tax avoidance among loss firms. Using the methodology in Schwab, Stomberg, and Xia (2022) to identify and classify deliberate and intentional tax avoidance activities from companies’ effective tax rate reconciliations, we find that approximately 35 percent of...

Many studies use GAAP effective tax rates (ETR) as proxies for tax avoidance and rely on the maintained assumption that very low (high) ETRs represent the greatest (least) tax avoidance. We provide large-sample empirical evidence on how well ETRs capture cross-sectional differences in tax...

Accounting estimates are susceptible to managerial errors and bias, thereby generating audit risk. Quantifying and understanding the determinants and consequences of auditors’ influence on clients’ accounting estimates is therefore important. Using a novel econometric technique, we estimate...

Managers express growing concern over media coverage of corporate taxes, yet no large-sample empirical study examines this phenomenon. As a first step to fill this void, we identify factors associated with the likelihood and negative tone of media tax coverage and examine firms' tax avoidance...

Despite the importance of internal decision-making for corporate tax outcomes, we know little about the role of within-firm delegation of decision rights. Using confidential survey data, we examine the relation between corporate tax effectiveness and the extent to which capital investments,...

In 2016, the U.K. government passed a new regulation requiring large businesses to publicly disclose their tax strategy. The regulator expects these mandatory, qualitative tax disclosures to attract public scrutiny on firms’ tax practices, which would in turn pressure firms to reduce tax...

This study examines an adversarial attitude toward tax enforcement disclosed in income tax footnotes, where companies express disagreement with tax authorities or willingness to pursue litigation if issues under audit are unresolved. Specifically, we examine the determinants of an adversarial...

We examine the role of government in the labor-creditor relationship using the case of the Chrysler bankruptcy. As a result of the government intervention, firms in more unionized industries experienced lower event-window abnormal bond returns, higher abnormal bond yields, and lower cumulative...

Accounting research on tax has primarily focused on documenting the income shifting strategies of multinational corporations. However, no studies, as far as we are aware, have hitherto explored how large accountancy firms manage their own tax affairs despite being huge economic entities in their...