Abstract
Given that tax-related critical audit matters (tax CAMs) were prevalent among accelerated filers (18.5% of observations) during the initial year of CAM disclosures, we examine whether an auditor's disclosure of tax CAMs is associated with variation in tax-related financial reporting quality, tax avoidance, and tax-related earnings management. Finding an association between tax CAMs and one of these tax outcomes would indicate that the new auditor reporting standard has indirectly affected investors. Examining the first year of CAM disclosures, we do not find that tax CAMs are associated with broad proxies of tax-related audit or financial reporting quality (e.g., restatements, internal control weaknesses, comment letters) or tax avoidance (e.g., effective tax rates or book-to-tax differences). We do find that tax CAMs are associated with a modest increase in tax accrual quality, an increase in the reserve for unrecognized tax benefits, and a reduction in the likelihood of tax-related earnings management. However, we do not find these tax CAM effects persist into the second year of CAM reporting. Our evidence is consistent with tax CAM disclosures having a modest but short-lived effect on companies' reporting of tax accounts. Our findings should inform the PCAOB as they conduct their post-implementation review of the new audit reporting standard.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 719-747 |
| Number of pages | 29 |
| Journal | Contemporary Accounting Research |
| Volume | 41 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 1 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2023 The Authors. Contemporary Accounting Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Canadian Academic Accounting Association.
Funding
We thank Miguel Minutti-Meza (the editor) and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. In addition, we thank Ryan Ballestero, Erik Beardsley, Joe Brazel, Andrew Finley, Michael Gurbutt (PCAOB discussant), Nicholas Hallman, Nathan Herrmann, Steven Kachelmeier, Trent Krupa, Lil Mills, Frank Murphy, Lauren Reid, Scott Showalter, Brady Williams, Kaishu Wu (ATA discussant), an anonymous Big 4 senior manager, workshop participants at Indiana University, University of Connecticut, and North Carolina State University, and participants at the 2020 PCAOB Conference on Auditing and Capital Markets and the 2021 AAA Audit and ATA Midyear Meetings for helpful comments. We thank Jing Cui, Jeremy Greene, Marissa Martin, and Boyan Zhu for their research assistance. Jaime Schmidt gratefully acknowledges support from the KPMG Centennial Fellowship in Accounting.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Miguel Minutti-Meza | |
| University of Southern Indiana | |
| Connecticut 06520 Yale University New Haven Connecticut 06520 | |
| University of North Carolina and North Carolina State University |
Keywords
- critical audit matters
- expanded audit reports
- financial reporting quality
- tax avoidance
- tax reporting
- tax-related earnings management
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Accounting
- Finance
- Economics and Econometrics