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Corporate sponsorship of sporting and cultural events has emerged as a critical component of global promotion strategy. Global sponsorship by multinationals could be made more cost‐effective with similar and generally consistent taxation legislation worldwide. International environmental and quality management standards such as ISO 14000 and ISO 9000 are examples of global standards that have emerged due to the increasingly international nature of commerce. Describes the tax implications of corporate sponsorship utilizing the USA and Ireland as illustrative examples, provides general guidelines for other nations including the UK, and suggests that sponsorship regulations be made more consistent globally.

The paper aims to examine the involvement of global accountancy firms in devising and selling tax avoidance schemes euphemistically marketed as “tax planning”.

The study draws upon a range of secondary sources, including legal cases and government reports, to demonstrate how “tax planning” involves “wilful blindness” to complicity in dubious and sometimes fraudulent activity.

The study reveals in detail the construction and promotion of elaborate tax avoidance schemes by big accounting firms. It casts doubt upon the “business culture” that has become established in these firms.

The study relies upon secondary sources. Subject to gaining adequate access to the big accounting firms, research based upon close-up investigation of “tax planning” would further illuminate such practices.

The study shows how normalised and institutionalised “tax planning” schemes have become in the big four accounting firms. It suggests that such schemes require closer scrutiny if payments of tax are to be made as intended, and thereby provide the revenues required to maintain public services such as education, health and pensions.

The study informs a debate about the payment of taxes and the role of big accounting firms in creating aggressive tax avoidance schemes. It questions the appropriateness and adequacy of private regulation of these firms and so contributes to a public debate on the tax contribution of comparatively powerful and privileged parties.

The study “blows the whistle” on the role of big accounting firms in devising schemes that reduce the “tax take” on business and thereby reduces the revenues required to provide and maintain public services.

Tax Identity Theft involves the illegal use of a potential taxpayer’s identity, usually the social security number, to fraudulently file a tax return and claim a refund. The victim is the real owner of the social security number who will have difficulties getting a tax refund, as the offender has already taken a refund for the year in question. This paper aims to investigate whether the increased use and adoption of electronic tax filing (i.e. E-Filing) technologies has inadvertently resulted in a corresponding growth in Tax Identity Theft.

Multiple regressions are used to analyze the data that is extracted from the Identity Theft complaint reports (maintained by the Federal Trade Commission) and the tax filing statistics (retrieved from the Internal Revenue Service).

The results indicate that E-Filing can indirectly but significantly increase Tax Identity Theft through the full mediation effects of individual Self-E-Filing and Direct Deposit adoption, after controlling for general Identity Theft, the number of Individual Tax Returns and Total Refunds.

The authors explore the association between the adoption of tax e-filing technologies and Tax Identity Theft. The findings suggest that the key loopholes in the Tax Identity Theft process are at the Self-E-Filing and the Direct Deposit points. Several practical recommendations for patching these loopholes are provided and discussed.

This paper aims to argue that enterprise culture is producing negative effects. Companies and major accountancy firms are increasingly willing to increase their profits through indulgence in price fixing, tax avoidance/evasion, bribery, corruption, money laundering and practices that show scant regard for social norms and even laws.

The paper locates business behaviour within the broader dynamics of capitalism to argue that hunger for higher profits at almost any cost is not constrained by rules, laws and even periodic regulatory action.

The paper uses publicly available evidence to show that accountancy firms are engaged in anti‐social behaviour. Evidence is provided to show that in pursuit of higher profits firms have operated cartels, engaged in tax avoidance/evasion, bribery, corruption and money laundering.

The paper seeks to bring the anti‐social activities of accountancy firms under scrutiny and thus extend possibilities of research in social responsibility, ethics, accountability, claims of professionalism, social disorder and crime.

It is rare for accounting scholars to examine predatory practices of accounting firms. It shows that predatory practices affect a variety of arenas and stakeholders.

During the height of the financial/credit crisis of 2008, the US Internal Revenue Service issued temporary guidance that permits REITs (real estate investment trusts) to retain cash and pay “effective stock dividends” through 2009 to meet their income distribution requirement. The purpose of this study is to investigate the policy implications of this guidance on shareholders' wealth and the intra‐industry effects for non‐event, rival REITs when event REITs announced elective stock dividends.

This study identified the announcements of the Revenue Procedures 2008‐68 and 2009‐15 and subsequent six equity REITs announcing the distribution of effective stock dividends in the first quarter of 2009. To assess their implications, this study adopted the event study methodology and multivariate regressions to examine the REIT price reactions and their distribution to the Revenue Procedure announcements and to the elective stock dividend announcements, respectively.

The Revenue Procedure announcements have positive wealth effects on the entire REIT market and REITs with higher leverage enjoy larger abnormal returns. During firm stock dividend announcement windows, non‐event, rival REITs have higher positive price reactions when the event firm and the non‐event firm are not alike and their returns have a low correlation coefficient, when the event firm has a large negative abnormal price reaction, and when the event firm pays cash/stock dividends in the mixture of 40 percent:60 percent, instead of 10 percent:90percent.

The results will help REIT investors to make better decisions. This study produces important implications for investors to pick REITs which are likely to experience higher returns at periods of turmoil when announcements about dividend policy changes are expected.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study looking into intra‐industry effects of REIT dividend announcements and the policy implications of the elective REIT stock dividends permitted by the US Internal Revenue Service. The results of this study show that the informational signals associated with these announcement events are rich and have intra‐industry implications on REIT share prices.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the proposed Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) regulations released on February 8, 2012 by the US Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The paper provides an overview of the changes to prior FATCA guidance in the proposed regulations, including the definition of a foreign financial institution (FFI), due diligence requirements to identify US accounts, procedures to verify compliance, phase‐in information required to be reported, verification procedures, definitions of FFIs that are “deemed” to meet the FATCA requirements, definition of “passthru” payments, explanation of exemptions from withholding related to certain “grandfathered obligations,” temporary relief for FFIs with non‐compliant affiliates, and a proposed intergovernmental approach to FATCA implementation through domestic reporting and reciprocal automatic exchange of information.

The paper reveals that the FATCA grew out of Congressional concern that US taxpayers were evading taxes by failing to report US‐source income on assets held abroad. The FATCA legislation left many of the details on implementation to the US Treasury and IRS. The intergovernmental framework is not a done deal. The proposed reciprocal, automatic exchange of information would be a sea change from existing US information reporting practices and is sure to be controversial.

The paper provides expert guidance from experienced financial institutions lawyers.

Ireland has extensive corporate tax allowances and low rates of corporation tax. Thus connected companies have an incentive to switch profits to Ireland using transfer pricing. This article examines value added and trade statistics of certain chemical and food sectors published by the CSO in Ireland. These data were found to be consistent with switching profits to Ireland using transfer pricing. To date in Ireland, the main debate centring on the use of transfer pricing has been the distortion to economic statistics. However it is likely that tax‐collecting authorities in other countries are concerned with tax strategies associated with profit‐switching transfer pricing (pstp). This article shows that Ireland is important in terms of tax savings for several large US‐based MNCs and as a corollary to this Ireland is also important in terms of investigations by the Internal Revenue Service of the US.

This paper aims to explain how the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, as modified by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act of 2015, changes the way the US Internal Revenue Service will conduct audits of collective investment vehicles treated as partnerships for US tax purposes.

This study explains the entities covered by the new partnership audit regime, the effective dates of the new regime and steps to be taken by funds covered by the new audit regime.

The results show that the new regime creates a liability at the partnership level for any unpaid tax, placing the tax burden on current-year partners.

A fund manager should determine whether the new audit regime is applicable to any of the funds he or she is managing and, if so, amend the fund documents to accommodate the new audit rules, providing a mechanism to elect and supervise a partnership representative, a mechanism to allocate the economic burden of the tax to the appropriate partners and a procedure for selecting the method to calculate the amount of the fund’s tax liability attributable to an audit.

This study provides practical guidance from experienced investment, fund and tax lawyers.