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Married couples receive tax benefits such as favorable tax rates, higher exclusions, higher phase-outs, and combined deductions. However, joint and several tax liability is a major issue facing these taxpayers. The term innocent spouse relief, within the Internal Revenue Code, is a direct result of one spouse failing to satisfy the joint liability for the married couple. Since both individuals are jointly and severally liable for the combined liability, the innocent spouse may be responsible for the liability in whole or in part. Our study examines this highly litigated arena of innocent spouse relief. To assist in this area of taxation, the Internal Revenue Service has provided taxpayers and tax practitioners with guidance. Revenue Procedure 2003-61 (2003-2 CB 296) outlines factors useful in determining whether innocent spouse relief should be granted. Additionally, this study creates a predictive model containing only three significant factors (economic hardship, knowledge/reason, significant benefit) capable of predicting with approximately 89% accuracy. These same three variables are significant after running multiple regression with p-values of 0.002 (economic hardship), 0.000 (knowledge/reason to know), and 0.001 (significant benefit). These factors provide valuable insight to practitioners when advising clients on challenging or accepting the Internal Revenue Service's decision. Additionally, abuse is marginally significant in the regression model. Also, judge gender and political affiliation are analyzed. However, the gender of the judge and political affiliation fail to be statistically significant using the chi-square test and regression model.

In healthcare, overuse and underuse of medical treatments represent equally dangerous deviations from an optimal use equilibrium and arouse concerns about possible implications for patients’ health, and for the healthcare system in terms of both costs and access to medical care. Medical liability plays a dominant role among the elements that can affect these deviations. Therefore, a remarkable economic literature studies how medical decisions are influenced by different levels of liability. In particular, identifying the relation between liability and treatments selection, as well as disentangling the effect of liability from other incentives that might be in place, is a task for sound empirical research. Several studies have already tried to tackle this issue, but much more needs to be done. In this chapter, we offer an overview of the state of the art in the study of the relation between liability and treatments selection. First, we reason on the theoretical mechanisms underpinning the relationship under investigation by presenting the main empirical predictions of the related literature. Second, we provide a comprehensive summary of the existing empirical evidence and its main weaknesses. Finally, we conclude by offering guidelines for further research.

This paper examines the decision criteria used by federal courts to adjudicate equitable innocent-spouse relief, when such relief has previously been denied by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Empirical logit/probit regression is used, rather than traditional legal analysis. Specifically, we determine which of the equitable-relief criteria detailed in the innocent-spouse rules did affect judicial decisions during our sample period. We also determine the relative importance of the factors. Using these data, taxpayers and their advisors can better decide whether to pursue further litigation, and how best to tailor the pertinent arguments.

We explore the significance of social ontology and its capacity to inform the specification of organizational status, architecture and capacities. We consider how different conceptions of social ontology are critical for explicating a range of epistemological and socio-economic questions concerning organizations and develop a research agenda oriented to studying these issues from the perspective of management and organization studies.

Ethical issues and moral reasoning are important in the tax policy context because shared moral values create good societies (Paul et al., 2006). This study of the equitable relief subset of the innocent spouse rules is a good example of Congressional and IRS policy that has been substantially reformed twice (and continues to be reassessed) to create tax law that effectively treats innocent spouses equitably (Fleischman & Shen, 1999). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree to which subjects' moral reasoning, using the first two steps of Rest's (1986) ethical reasoning model, is related to perceived moral intensity (Jones, 1991) in several tax-based equitable relief situations. Integrative social contracts theory provides the study's theoretical lens.

Subjects evaluated a mailed-questionnaire containing two separate equitable relief scenarios about a spouse who was unaware of her husband's tax evasion – one scenario included verbal abuse and the other scenario contained no such abuse. The survey also contained a variety of ethics and attitudinal measures used to measure the study's focal variables. The results support the a priori hypotheses that moral intensity is positively related to recognition of an ethical issue, judgment that the ethical scenario is unethical, and judgment to grant equitable relief. In addition, the scenario containing emotional abuse was associated with increased levels of moral intensity as compared to the scenario that did not contain abuse. The paper concludes with a discussion of both professional and public policy implications.

This paper studies the impact of ownership structure on performance in European banking both prior and during the recent crisis. We use a panel of European banks during the period 1996–2011 and utilize random effects estimations in order to identify differences in bank performance (profitability, loan quality, and cost efficiency) due to differences in ownership structure. Both stakeholder and shareholder banks have distinct advantages, shareholder banks showing better profitability before the crisis but stakeholder banks having higher loan quality before and during the crisis. Differences in profitability and loan quality between stakeholder and shareholder banks before the crisis are especially pronounced in countries that experienced a banking crisis after 2007. There is strong a heterogeneity in performance between different stakeholder ownership groups. With the exception of private savings banks, profitability and loan quality of stakeholder banks has improved relative to that of general shareholder banks during the crisis years. The paper contributes to the previous literature by comparing pre-crisis and crisis performance and includes more refined ownership classifications. The results indicate that the survival of the stakeholder model is due to its competitive advantages. Our findings provide support for those arguing that the diversity of organizational structures is worth preserving. Ownership pluralism should become a policy objective in the banking industry.

The debate over an auditor's ability to remain independent while simultaneously providing nonaudit services to the audit client has a long history. In recent years, several factors have combined to heighten regulators’ concerns about this issue. This study uses a case methodology research design to analyze the testimonies given by financial statement users at the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC, 2000b, 2000c, 2000d, 2000e) Independence Hearings in relation to this debate. The analysis is framed by the principle of user primacy. Findings indicate that changes from the SEC's initial proposal to final rule on independence are more closely aligned with preparers’ than users’ preferences, despite claims to the contrary.