The Influence of Tax Professionals’ Attributions and Affective Reactions on Judgments and Recommendations
研究税务专业人士如何因客户进行应税交易的原因产生归因和同情心，进而非规范地影响其证据评估和客户建议，可能削弱客观性并增加客户风险。
ABSTRACT Professional tax accountants are expected to serve clients with objectivity and advocacy. This study examines how tax professionals’ judgments and decisions are influenced by their attributions relating to a client’s reason for entering into a taxable transaction and the professional’s resulting affective reaction in the form of sympathy. In an experiment with experienced tax professionals, we adapt the conceptual foundations of attribution-affect-action theory to predict and find that a professional’s affective reaction to a client’s reason for entering a taxable transaction can have a non-normative influence on the professional’s evidential support assessments and client recommendations. This influence has the potential to undermine professionals’ ability to adhere to professional standards that require objective assessments of the strength of a tax position and the potential to directly and indirectly influence recommendations in ways that expose the client to more (or less) risk than the technical merits of the position would suggest. Data Availability: The data underlying this study’s analysis and results are available upon request from the authors.