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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 resolution of tax issues present significant ethical dilemmas for tax practitioners. The nature and extent of ethical concerns has important implications both for the tax profession and tax administration. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there are significant differences in the ethical perceptions of tax agents and Big 4 practitioners.

A mail questionnaire was used to elicit data as to the frequency and importance of a range of ethical issues in tax practice.

Both groups rated highly those issues which relate primarily to the conduct of professional responsibilities. Ensuring “reasonable enquiries” were taken, maintaining an appropriate level of “technical competence” and “continuing to act” for a client, when not appropriate, were of most concern to practitioners.

The paper focuses on the tax profession in Western Australia, so the outcomes may not be generalisable elsewhere in either Australia or the rest of the Asia‐Pacific region.

There was a significant difference between the two groups with regard to “loophole seeking”. This has implications for client expectations of alternative roles: as “tax exploiter” for the Big 4, and as “tax enforcer/compliance” for the tax agent.

There have been few empirical studies reporting the range of ethical issues encountered in tax practice. To date the literature tends to treat the tax profession as a homogenous group, whereas this research demonstrates differences in ethical outlook between sole‐practitioners and large international public accounting firms.

This study aims to examine the consequences of tax authorities’ use of concession-timing negotiation strategies on tax practitioners and their final proposed offers.

This is an experimental study conducted on tax practitioners using a design of 2 × 1, varying the tax authorities’ negotiation strategy (i.e. concession-gradual and concession-end strategies) across two levels.

The concessionary negotiation strategies adopted by tax authorities influence tax practitioners’ final proposed offers, their perceptions of fairness (i.e. distributive justice and procedural justice) and their aggressiveness of stance in tax audit negotiations.

This experimental study contributes to existing research on tax authority-tax practitioner negotiation models used during tax audits by providing the first evidence that concession timing matters. The study extends the negotiation model to include tax aggressiveness as a new variable and examines the indirect roles of fairness and offers in tax audit negotiations.

The purpose of this paper is to determine whether Hofstede’s cultural dimensions have a significant relationship with ethical decision-making among tax practitioners while performing their duties in ensuring tax compliance among taxpayers.

A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from tax practitioners in the state of Terengganu, Malaysia. Two hundred questionnaires were distributed via Google Forms and email to tax practitioners who were selected from the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia website using a mixture of systematic random and snowball sampling approaches. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences software program was used to analyse the collected data.

The results show that power distance (PD), individualism (IND) and uncertainty avoidance (UAV) have a significant relationship with ethical decision-making, whereas masculinity (MAS) has no significant relationship with ethical decision-making among tax practitioners while carrying out their duties. The positive relationship of PD and of IND with decision-making behaviour indicates that ethical decision-making is highly practised in a low PD and low IND culture rather than in a high PD and high IND culture. In contrast, UAV shows a negative beta sign, which indicates that tax practitioners tend to practise ethical decision-making in a high UAV culture.

This study fills a gap in the literature in regard to the influence of culture on tax compliance particularly among tax practitioners in Malaysia. The study shows how culture is related to the decision-making practices of tax practitioners while performing their role as an intermediary between their clients and the government. It is worthwhile to examine the decision-making of tax practitioners because the results of such an examination not only provide some insights into the professional practices of accountants that will be of interest to the relevant authorities such as the Malaysian Institute of Accountants, they also offer some information that will be of assistance to higher learning institutions in formulating accounting programmes to produce the future generation of accountants.

In an attempt to enhance the core professional values of tax practitioners in South Africa, the South African Revenue Service has proposed the regulation of tax practitioners’ services. It is arguable whether or not this would be the only factor to influence the ethical behaviour of tax practitioners. A literature review was conducted to identify factors that could influence the ethical behaviour of tax practitioners. Numerous possibilities emerged. It is therefore recommended that if regulation is to be successful, caution should be exercised in writing a code of best practice for tax practitioners.

This study aims to examine the ICT skills needed by a fresh accounting graduate when first joining a tax firm; to find out usage of electronic tax (e‐tax) applications in tax practice; to assess the rating of senior tax practitioners on fresh graduates' ICT and e‐tax applications skills; and to solicit tax practitioners' opinion regarding integrating ICT skills and tax software into a tax course.

An online survey method was used to collect the data. An online survey was distributed to 385 tax practitioners who worked in the accounting/tax firms that participated in the university's internship programs. A total of 112 usable questionnaires were analyzed.

The survey found that the three most important ICT skills with which fresh graduates should be familiar before graduating were spreadsheet software, word‐processing software, and e‐mail. The result shows that the usage of e‐tax applications is still not pervasive in tax practice. Overall, senior tax practitioners rated fresh accounting graduates' ICT skills as “average”. Both senior (75 percent) and junior (73.7 percent) tax practitioners agreed that ICT skills and tax software should be integrated in the tax course offered by the universities.

This study has provided insights to policy makers and tax educators to revamp the existing tax curriculum, and to introduce learning tax software in classes, and to place more emphasis in imparting ICT skills in tax education.

Scholarly study on tax education and ICT is scant. Little is known about whether the existing tax education is adequate in meeting the needs of the employers in the job market. This paper has emerged to fill a knowledge gap.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of the tax agent as a preparer of tax returns and provider of professional tax advice under a system based on self‐assessment principles. It recognises the competing pressures under which tax agents attempt to discharge their professional responsibilities, and examines the implications for potentially unethical behaviour.

The paper uses a mail survey of tax professionals in Western Australia. Respondents are presented with realistic tax return scenarios, in which the demands of the client are varied according to the risk of audit, the severity of tax law and the materiality of dollar amounts involved.

The findings suggest that the severity of tax law violation is an important factor in ethical decision‐making, but that audit risk and the amounts involved are not.

The lack of support for audit risk as an influential variable is an important outcome, because policy makers have traditionally proceeded on the basis that increases in audit probabilities will reduce the likelihood of taxpayers adopting aggressive tax reporting positions. However, since the findings are based on an Australian sample, care must be taken in generalizing these findings elsewhere.

The implications are important in that alternative enforcement and compliance strategies must be considered by tax administrators.

The paper extends empirical research into taxpayer attitudes to those of the preparers of tax returns. The findings will be of relevance both to tax agents and to tax administrators.

Suggests that, as the UK moves to a system of self‐assessment for determining income tax liability, it is instructive to look at the experience of Australia, where such a system has operated for the last ten years. Reports that the Australian experience identifies significant changes in the operations of accountants, the ethical pressures to which they are subject and the rise of the “tax agent” as a specialized tax practitioner, all of which we might anticipate to be mirrored in the UK.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive theory as to why academic research in accounting is said not to help practice.

The authors (1) present a comprehensive literature review in the academic/practitioner gap arena, and (2) develop a theoretical background for it. Further, they identify (3) the different information needs of these groups using value group theory and (4) the inherent factors and personality traits that influence career choice. Next, they (5) evaluate the values of each subgroup. They then (6) theorize what types of accounting research would interest each. They argue that (7) individuals who enter the academy differ from those who enter practice, and (8) the socialization processes and the impact of the professional setting (practice or academe) on behaviors further the separation of academic research from practitioner needs.

This paper is theoretical. It suggests that bridging the gap will be difficult. The study is theoretical. The limitation is that it does not empirically test the relationships hypothesized. By providing a comprehensive model of factors underlying the gap, however, it can be a fruitful source of research ideas for years to come. The implications are that it will be difficult to bridge the gap between accounting practitioners and academics. Having a greater understanding of the causes of the gap, however, may be very useful in fostering thought as to how to overcome it.

Prior literature on the topic is largely atheoretical. This paper is the first to develop a broad theory of the gap.

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.