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The relationship between the local option sales tax (LOST) and property taxes and own source revenue is not well documented in the literature. This may be due in part to the aggregated nature of the data, which fails to capture different motivations for adoption of LOSTs. Using county-level data from 35 states, this study finds that LOSTs increase own source revenue and in some circumstances decrease property tax burdens. The primary contribution of this research is that it uses a policy variable, the LOST rate, to distinguish between the two types of counties that use their LOST revenues differently. This research represents the first step in bridging the gap between the LOST literature and the tax mix choice literature.

Purpose — The chapter assesses the linkages between unreported economic activities and different individualistic and non-individualistic motives as perceived by firm management.Design/methodology/approach — The empirical research is based on a survey of the management of firms operating in the Baltic States. The survey contains information on the perceived extent of unreported activities and on a large number of firm-, sector-, and country-specific factors. A principal component analysis identifies clusters of motives for unreported activity. Regression analyses ascertain the importance of motives individually and as principal components on the extent of unreported activities.Findings — Both individualistic and non-individualistic motives are important for the prevalence of unreported activities. The individualist motives refer to the management being solely profit-oriented and self-interested. Among possible non-individualist motives, measures of government performance and perceptions of reciprocity towards the government appear to play important roles for the extent of unreported activities, but broader societal norms may also play a role.Research limitations/implications — The study considers the perceptions that managers have of unreported activities and other features. These perceptions are subjective and subject to substantial uncertainty. All results should be interpreted in light of the subjective nature of the survey answers.Social implications — Taken literally, the results suggest that stronger government performance is associated with a reduction in unreported activities, at least as perceived by the management. Broader societal developments may also be of importance.Originality/value — The inclusion of variables capturing individualistic as well as non-individualistic motives gives a comprehensive picture of factors behind unreported activities. We employ principal component analysis which allows us to cluster individual survey answers and to produce composite measures of different explanatory factors.

This chapter proposes that tax education, proxied by Master of Science in Taxation (MST) degree, has substantial influence on chief financial officers’ (CFOs) knowledge, skill sets, values, and cognitive preferences and further influences their decisions in tax reporting. By empirically examining the relation between CFOs with MST degree and their companies' tax compliance based on US data between 2004 and 2016, we find that CFOs with MST degree are associated with improved tax compliance, suggesting that US MST education, beyond general accounting education, cultivates graduates with higher levels of professionalism and ethics in the field of taxation. Moreover, we find that CFOs' tenure, age, and compensation influence the relation between tax education and tax compliance, suggesting company's compensation and employee policies influence executives' tax decisions. Finally, we find that pressures from financial reporting and CEOs with accounting educational background could alleviate the role of CFOs with accounting educational background in tax reporting, while institutional owners could strengthen the role of CFOs. This chapter provides evidence regarding the social implication of MST program and has important managerial implication to tax compliance, executive recruitment, and corporate governance.

This chapter presents a seven-part case developed for use in a graduate-level tax planning class. The case is organized in a taxpayer/business “life-cycle” approach. Over the semester the case follows a married couple as they consider a number of investments, start a business, and expand the business. As the case progresses, the couple faces increasingly complex tax and business issues. The couple eventually winds down their involvement in the business and begins to plan for their retirement years. This chapter also provides a review of behavioral tax research published in the top accounting journals over the period 2004–2013. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the case could be adapted by behavioral tax researchers in their research programs and perhaps by accounting firms in their training programs.

Fiscal policy is one of the weighty instruments of state regulation and is intended to ensure the creation of an institutional environment to reach the strategic objectives of sustainable development. This chapter is devoted to the study of the implementation of tax reform in Belarus. It analyzes the place of tax instruments in economic growth and investigates the strategic direction of tax reforms. The actual tax policy in Belarus is determined by the requirements of the national strategy of sustainable development which aims to ensure a stable financial basis for the development of society, economy, and environmental management. The historical and economic conditions of Belarus require an assessment of the local peculiarities of the use of tax instruments, which are now in force in leading countries. Therefore the study of foreign experience is complemented by an analysis of local conditions. Tax policy must ensure and support changes in national economies related to globalization, informatization and digitalization of the modern world, while maintaining the ideas of social justice. As a theoretical and practical tool for improving the quality of the tax system through the modernization of the incentives system, the concept of tax expenditures as a part of the budget process was investigated.

This article aims to review qualitative research on tax practitioners. US tax professionals have always found themselves in a uniquely ambiguous position. Unlike auditors, the espousal of service to the public interest is not constantly articulated. Unlike management consultants, the devotion that practitioners can have to their clients’ interest cannot be unconstrained. Tax practitioners are expected to help clients minimize their tax liabilities, while simultaneously assisting the government collect fair shares of tax revenue. Using semi-structured interviews, the paper examines the nuance of this navigation. Practitioners struggle to serve two masters, albeit imperfectly. The qualitative nature of relationships looms as a disproportionally important factor, often neglected in normative accounts and empirical evaluations

Semi-structured interviews with tax practitioners.

Practitioners struggle to serve two masters, albeit imperfectly. Where they strike the balance is difficult to predict, as people differ in how aggressive they are willing to be. Practitioners want to be ethical and rarely are willing to take positions that they perceive to be dangerous to their livelihood. The fear of audits is also shared. The qualitative nature of relationships looms as a disproportionately important factor, and one that is not well-appreciated in the literature.

More study of a qualitative nature is needed. Students need to be given a better idea of the conflicts that exist in practice on a daily basis. More work is needed that exposes the importance of the client interface and the limited value of tax research outside of the marketplace.

The long-term relationship with clients is very important to how tax practitioners approach the ambiguities of the tax law. How tax practitioners decide what is worth an investment of their time is under-studied

The extent to which we can ask individuals to protect the integrity of the tax collection process is debatable as long as they are compensated by self-interested taxpayers. The limits of ethical codes should be revisited in such a complex world.

Actually listens to working professions describe their world.

The existing literature documents mixed evidence toward the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate tax planning (e.g., Davis, Guenther, Krull, & Williams, 2016; Hoi, Wu, & Zhang, 2013). In this study, I aim to identify a causal relationship between CSR and tax planning, leveraging the staggered adoptions of constituency statutes in US states, which is a plausibly exogenous shock to firms' emphasis on their social responsibility. In general, the statutes permit firm directors to consider the interests of all constituents when making business decisions, including those who benefit from firms paying their fair share of income taxes. Thus, the adoption of the statutes raises the importance of firms' social responsibility in paying income taxes. Employing a staggered difference-in-differences (DiD) method, I find that firms incorporated in states that have adopted constituency statutes exhibit significantly higher effective tax rates (ETRs) based on current tax expense. This causal relationship suggests that managers, with the legitimacy to consider the social impact of tax avoidance, become less aggressive in tax planning. I further find that the effect of adoption is stronger for financially unconstrained firms and firms in retail businesses, where the demand (cost) for tax avoidance is lower (higher). Finally, I show that my main results are driven by firms located in states with a high sense of social responsibility and firms with high levels of tax avoidance prior to the adoption. Overall, the findings in this chapter contribute to the literature by delineating a negative causal relationship between CSR and tax avoidance and identifying a positive social impact brought by the passage of constituency legislation.

This paper attempts to develop a simple, static model of tax administration that is capable of explaining the widespread collusive petty tax administration corruption observed in developing countries.

This paper utilizes a positivist research framework and adopts a theoretical method of analysis, although secondary data will also be mentioned to support theoretical arguments whenever it is appropriate to do so.

A high rate of collusive tax corruption is inevitable in developing countries.

The model is static and needs to be extended into a dynamic model.

Traditional enforcement tools such as higher audits or a higher penalty regime against tax evasion do not work. Tax simplification can lessen the incidence of tax corruption.

Fighting tax corruption requires significant changes in the attitudes of taxpayers and tax auditors.

This paper combines the literature on Kantian economics and tax compliance in an innovative fashion.

This chapter provides an overview of the explanations and factors affecting dividend policy. This study employs a systematic literature review approach to review a large sample of studies related to the dividend puzzle. Although the analysis reveals mixed evidence involving the theories and determinants of dividend policy, some determinants appear in numerous studies. However, no consensus exists on an optimal dividend to resolve the dividend puzzle, and the authors propose a model to deal with the same. When examining dividend policy, researchers should consider the firm, market, behavior, and other determinants. When making significant dividend or stock decisions, managers and shareholders should also contemplate the factors, interactions, inadequacies, and consequences. Future researchers should strive to take a more comprehensive view when resolving the dividend puzzle. This study provides a current and complete picture of dividend policy's available theories and empirical determinants. Its significant contribution is identifying some of the more consistently essential determinants of dividend policy while proposing a holistic model to address the prevailing dividend dilemma.

This study aims to propose a new conforming tax measure based on the work of Badertscher et al. (2019).

This study divides total tax avoidance/management (TM) into nonconforming and conforming portions through a regression. The residual of the regression is treated as the conforming tax measure. In addition, the new conforming tax measure is validated via three approaches. Then, this study examines the moderating effect of nonconforming earnings management (EM) on the relationship between conforming TM and firm performance.

The empirical results show that the model has stronger explanatory power than the model proposed by Badertscher et al. (2019). Additionally, the validation results show that the mean value of the conforming tax measure is lower in quasi-private corporations (financially constrained companies) than in matched public corporations (nonfinancially constrained companies), and firms under high market capital pressure are less motivated to engage in conforming tax practices. Furthermore, nonconforming EM positively moderates the conforming tax–ROA association, implying that nonconforming EM can reduce financial reporting costs resulting from conforming tax practices.

This study contributes to conforming tax research in the following ways. First, this study proposes a new conforming tax measure by substituting the cash book tax difference (BTD) for the BTD in the model of Badertscher et al. (2019) (“BKRW”). Second, this study demonstrates theoretically why the cash BTD should outperform the BTD in computing the BKRW conforming tax measure and confirm this empirically. Third, this study presents a three-way conceptual schema that divides corporations into two groups along each of three tax-relevant dimensions. The group of firms that use both conforming and nonconforming tax strategies have different characteristics compared to the other group. This study also validates the conforming tax measure across the two-group dichotomies.