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This study examines the association between the industry diversity of an audit office and audit quality, where industry diversity is the extent to which clients differ by industry classification. We find a negative association between industry diversity and audit quality that is robust to controlling for other audit office and client characteristics. We observe this association while holding the level of audit office specialization or expertise in a particular industry constant. The association is most apparent at the low end of the distribution of industry diversity, where audit offices with the least diverse client portfolios have the highest audit quality. We also find that the association exists for both small and large audit offices as well as both industry specialists and non-industry specialists. However, we do not observe the association when the office audits clusters of clients, where clusters are three or more clients in the same industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines whether a firm's business strategy affects their information environment. Organizational theory suggests that firms following an innovative "prospector" strategy have greater incentives to provide more frequent voluntary disclosures than firms following an efficient "defender" strategy. Furthermore, prospectors are more likely to attract greater coverage by external information intermediaries. We find that prospectors engage in more frequent management earnings guidance, issue more press releases, and are followed by more financial analysts compared with defenders. Next, we examine the association between business strategy and information asymmetry. We find that despite prospectors having attributes associated with information asymmetry (e.g., R&D, growth options), prospectors have lower information asymmetry than defenders. We attribute this finding to prospectors' greater access to both internal and external sources of disclosure compared with defender firms, which we confirm using mediation analysis. Collectively, our results suggest that business strategy does affect firms' information environments, incremental to known determinants, and that strategy serves as a useful context for understanding a firm's underlying information environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we provide evidence consistent with nonprofit organizations managing their taxable income to near zero by examining the cross-sectional distribution of taxable income as reported on IRS [...]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 revised the corporate alternative minimum tax (AMT) and explicitly linked corporate taxation to financial accounting 'Book Income'. Congress added the book income adjustment (although temporarily) to eliminate highly publicized instances in which corporations with substantial book income paid no tax. The intent of this study is to assess the incidence of the AMT and the industry groups expected to pay additional taxes under the new law. Our results indicate that while corporate taxes paid increased after implementation of the law, the incidence of the new law did not necessarily fall on those firms expected to pay the new tax. Firms with increased tax burdens did not necessarily incur lower tax burdens prior to the implementation of the new AMT, nor were they the most profitable. Consequently, the potential negative impact of this new law may have overshadowed its expected revenue generation and corrective benefits. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

The article discusses a study which investigates several facets of the decisions of the not-for-profit (NFP) sector in the U.S. to purchase tax services. The factors that influence the decision to choose from among the financial statement auditor, other professional services firms, or to self-prepare the tax return were modeled. The effect of the choice on executive compensation disclosure quality was investigated as well as whether the decision and the resulting quality of the tax return, affects contributions to NFP. The effect of tax service provider choice on NFP's Form 990 disclosure quality was also examined.

The article discusses a study which examined the influence of a firm's business strategy on its tax aggressiveness. How the characteristics of the strategy-types influence the manner in which firms weigh the costs and benefits of tax planning are considered to investigate whether the strategy-types are associated with firms' tax-planning strategies. The results contribute to research that helps explain the association between tax avoidance and firm-level characteristics, executive characteristics, and managerial incentives.