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This chapter investigates the nature of tax preparers’ confidence, as well as how the introduction of a tax decision support system (TDSS) affects tax preparers’ confidence levels. Psychological theories of confidence (e.g., Einhorn & Hogarth, 1978) are drawn upon to develop predictions regarding the role of process (ex ante) and outcome (ex post) confidence in tax return preparation. An experimental methodology is used with 114 inexperienced and experienced participants who prepare an individual income tax return manually or with tax preparation software (a TDSS). Less-experienced tax preparers have lower levels of ex-ante confidence and are more likely to be overconfident in the accuracy of their performance. Furthermore, when examining only the participants who made errors in their tax return preparation task, those that prepare the return with the TDSS are significantly more likely to be overconfident in their performance. These results support the predictions of Noga and Arnold (2002) and suggest that inexperienced users’ over-reliance on a TDSS (Masselli, Ricketts, Arnold, & Sutton, 2002) may be due to individuals’ overconfidence in the accuracy of their performance with the software.

Section 529 college savings plans are tax-favored investment vehicles, which saw tremendous growth after the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 expanded 529 plan benefits to include tax-free distributions for qualified higher education expenses. However, regulators, the press, and fund advisors criticized the Section 529 college savings plan industry for inadequate and nonuniform disclosures of investor information, such as historical returns, fees, taxes, and underlying investments. We investigate consumers’ investment choices after a disclosure regime change in 2003 and find that after enhanced disclosures became widely available, investors selected fewer plans offered exclusively through brokers, increasingly chose portfolios based on past investment performance, but remained unresponsive to state tax benefit disclosures. We also analyze the plans’ performance and find evidence that 529 investors are constrained to invest in portfolios with high, return-eroding fees. Nearly 20 percent of the portfolios have a statistically significant negative alpha, the measure of risk-adjusted excess return, while less than 1 percent have a statistically significant positive alpha.

This study examines the effect of using a computerized decision aid on student cognitive effort and learning in the first tax course. Students at a mid-western university in the United States prepared a 1040 tax return using either paper or tax software from a given set of taxpayer information. Students using paper forms reported higher levels of cognitive effort than did students using the tax software, however, no association between self-efficacy and cognitive effort was found. A test for association between decision aid type and inferential (higher-level) learning (the third level of Bloom's taxonomy) found cognitive effort to be statistically significant. The study also found a significant interaction between cognitive effort and experience. These results suggest that paper forms, which require students to work through task processes, may be better instructional tools for helping students acquire a deeper understanding of subject matter. Although tax software provides potential benefits of increased accuracy and speed, practitioners should be aware of its limitations as a learning tool.

The impact of paid tax return preparers on the horizontal equity (HE) of the federal tax system has significance for regulatory and tax policy reasons. Using multiple analytical techniques to consider data from the Statistics of Income Division's 2000 Individual Model File (IMF), this study shows that the HE measure is generally greater (implying less HE) for the paid-preparer returns than for the self-prepared returns, even after controlling for complexity and other variables that may differ systematically by tax preparation mode.

We examine the stock market reaction to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 during its enactment process, focusing on its international provisions. Consistent with extant evidence, we find lower returns for high-foreign-activity firms, indicating a negative market reaction to the international provisions overall. Considering specific international provisions, we find that the market reaction was more positive (negative) for firms likely most affected by the shift to a quasi-territorial system for taxing foreign earnings (the transition tax on existing unrepatriated earnings, the tax on global intangible low-taxed income, and/or the base erosion and antiabuse tax) than for other firms. Our findings imply that investors are able to disentangle the economic implications of complex and interactive tax law changes.

The results of this study indicate that a likely reason why a negative relation between estimated implicit taxes and pretax returns is empirically observed is the researcher’s election to choose a zero tax rate as the benchmark state and local tax rate. Normally, an observed negative relation between estimated implicit taxes and pretax returns supports the hypothesis generated by implicit tax theory. This conclusion regarding the implicit tax hypothesis may be premature whenever the incidence of state and local income taxes contributes to this empirical finding. First, state income taxes, treated as a negative subsidy when the benchmark state and local tax rate is set at zero, will likely cause implicit taxes to be underestimated. Second, the observed relationship between estimated implicit taxes and pretax returns appears to be reversible depending upon the researcher’s election of a statutory tax rate that incorporates the selected benchmark state and local tax rate.

The present study uses a sample of 848 firms covering the years from 1989 through 1998 to show how the relation between estimated implicit taxes and pretax returns can be manipulated by the selection of the benchmark state and local tax rate. Since choosing an accurate benchmark state and local tax rate can be problematic, the present study suggests adjusting both estimated implicit taxes and pretax income by the amount of state and local income taxes incurred. The results, using the regression model making this adjustment, appear to nullify the negative bias of a zero tax rate as the benchmark state and local tax rate.

This study examines how Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), as tax practitioners, interpret and apply the ethical tax standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), using a hypothetical situation. Although the authors attempt to determine if CPAs are more likely to apply the substantial authority standard given certain factors affecting both the CPAs and their tax clients, one-dimensional standard threshold applications leave us to interpret only whether these factors affect the CPAs’ decision to sign a tax return upholding an ambiguous position. The authors find that an aggressive CPA (self-reported) is more inclined to sign the return than an unaggressive CPA. The authors also find that favorable prior dealings with the IRS, and awareness that the IRS is not pursuing a contrary position to a certain tax position, both contribute significantly to the CPA’s willingness to sign the return. While an aggressive tax client also fosters willingness to sign, it appears that tax clients with a refund pending (as opposed to a payment pending) are more apt to trigger a signed return. Study results indicate that ambiguities in the tax code, in concert with mitigating CPA/client factors, may lead to significant discrepancies in interpretation and application.

This research explores the expectation gap between tax clients’ motivations to hire tax preparers versus tax preparers’ perceptions of those client motivations. The study builds on limited previous research by examining preparers primarily from local firms rather than focusing solely on large international firms. The Gaps Model of Service Quality provides the theoretical lens for the paper. We employ the recently developed Taxpayer Motivation Scale (TMS) to measure four client motivations to hire a preparer: (1) saving money, (2) saving time, (3) legal compliance, and (4) protection from the IRS. We measure expectation gaps for those four motivations using matched tax preparer–tax client dyads.

We employ statistical sub-group analyses to investigate the effects of both clients’ and preparers’ demographic characteristics that influence tax-expectation gaps. Results suggest client gender plays a noteworthy role in predicting many of the gaps. In addition, complexity of tax returns, children in the home, and client perceptions of tax-preparer advocacy help explain gaps. Finally, female preparers appear to be relatively more sensitive to client needs. We conclude that tax preparers need to (1) better understand their clients’ motivations for hiring them and (2) reexamine marketing efforts to educate clients about preparer credentials and potential strategy options for tax preparation.

This research addresses the question of whether market competition influences a firm's implicit tax burden. Implicit taxes are defined as the pretax rate of return disadvantage earned on an investment that is taxed preferentially. The Scholes and Wolfson (1992) model predicts that implicit taxes will fully offset any benefit from preferential tax treatment leading to no benefit from lower explicit taxes; however, their theory assumes perfect market competition. This chapter relaxes the assumption of perfect market competition and finds that firms in industries with lower competition bear lower implicit taxes and firms in industries with higher competition bear higher implicit taxes. These findings are consistent with monopoly and oligopoly behavior predictions where firms in less competitive industries have greater price setting power and can retain more of their tax savings while market forces in competitive industries force companies to pass along any savings to customers (Mason, 1939). Furthermore, these findings answer the call in the literature for more research on determinants of cross-sectional variation in implicit taxes (Shackelford & Shevlin, 2001).