The Role of Auditors, Non-Auditors, and Internal Tax Departments in Corporate Tax Aggressiveness
利用美国国税局关于谁签署公司纳税申报表的机密数据，研究了审计师、外部非审计师或内部税务部门作为税务合规负责人与企业税收激进程度的关系，发现自行报税或雇佣非审计师的企业比使用审计师报税的企业更激进，且审计师提供的税务服务与税收激进相关。
ABSTRACT Using confidential data from the Internal Revenue Service on who signs a corporation's tax return, we investigate whether the party primarily responsible for the tax compliance function of the firm—the auditor, an external non-auditor, or the internal tax department—is related to the corporation's tax aggressiveness. We report three key findings: (1) firms preparing their own tax returns or hiring a non-auditor claim more aggressive tax positions than firms using their auditor as the tax preparer; (2) auditor-provided tax services are related to tax aggressiveness even after considering tax preparer identity, which supports and extends prior research using tax fees as a proxy for tax planning; and (3) Big 4 tax preparers, in particular, are linked to less tax aggressiveness when they are the auditor than when they are not the auditor. Our findings help policymakers and researchers better understand an important feature of tax compliance intermediaries; particularly, how the dual role via audits is related to observable corporate tax outcomes.