Title

The Role Of Client Advocacy In The Development Of Tax Professionals' Advice

Keywords

Client advocacy; Client importance; Client risk; Tax advice

Abstract

A primary responsibility of tax professionals is to be an advocate for their clients (AICPA 2000). Prior studies have shown mixed results on how the advocate role influences tax professionals' decision processes and outcomes (e.g., Cloyd and Spilker 1999; Davis and Mason 2003; Barrick et al. 2004; Kahle and White 2004). In this study, we consider how advocacy may be at least partially context-specific, introduce the construct of client-specific advocacy, and thoroughly examine the influence of advocacy attitudes on a number of steps in the judgment and decision-making process. Consistent with attitude theory, we report experimental results that suggest client characteristics influence tax professionals' advocacy attitudes. We also find that clientspecific advocacy influences process variables such as the weighting of evidence and decision outcomes such as the recommendation of tax advice. The results of the study indicate that tax professionals may be unintentionally influenced by client attributes when making judgments and may have difficulty separating their advocacy and evidence evaluation roles.

Publication Date

2-1-2010

Publication Title

Journal of the American Taxation Association

Volume

32

Issue

1

Number of Pages

25-51

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.2308/jata.2010.32.1.25

Socpus ID

80052717411 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/80052717411

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