We examine whether state corporate effective tax rates (ETRs) that began trending downward in the 1990s rose in response to FASB Interpretation No. 48 (FIN 48), Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes. We find state ETRs increase substantially in 2006 through 2008 for tax aggressive firms....

FIN 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes, standardizes accounting for uncertain tax benefits and requires companies to disclose their tax reserve amounts. We summarize hand-collected disclosures related to tax reserves from 2005 through the first quarter of 2007. For the largest 100...

Concerns about auditor independence prompted regulators to restrict auditor-provided nonaudit services. Despite the failure of researchers to document a decrease in financial reporting quality associated with nonaudit services, there has been a significant decline in permissible auditor-provided...

We investigate whether politically-sensitive contractors pay higher taxes and whether their bargaining power reduces these tax costs. Using federal contractor data, we develop a new composite measure of political sensitivity that captures both the political visibility arising from federal...