Biography
Allison Kays is an Assistant Professor in the Practice of Accounting. Professor Kays focuses her time and effort on being an excellent teacher. She loves to spend her time thinking about financial reporting disclosures and if they accurately represent corporate transactions. Recently, she developed a new data analytics course to expose finance and accounting students to the critical thinking and coding skills they need to better understand financial data and to make well informed data based decisions. She holds a BS and a MS in Accounting from the University of Florida, as well as a PhD in Accounting from the University of Southern California. Prior to earning her PhD, Professor Kays worked as a tax accountant for Ernst & Young in Atlanta.
Education
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PhD in Business Administration (Accounting)University of Southern California
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Master of Accounting in AccountingUniversity of Florida
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Bachelor of Science (Accounting) in AccountingUniversity of Florida
Voluntary Disclosure Responses to Mandated Disclosure: Evidence from Australian Corporate Tax Transparency
The Accounting Review
June 2, 2023
2021
In order to deter aggressive tax planning, the Australian government mandated public disclosure of three line items from large corporations' tax returns. However, there is no evidence that the mandated disclosure led public firms to pay more taxes (Hoopes, Robinson, and Slemrod 2018). Instead, I find that firms strategically offset expected reputational costs by voluntarily issuing supplemental information. Specifically, when managers expect new reputational costs from the mandated tax return disclosure (wherein the disclosure reveals an unexpectedly low tax liability) and low proprietary costs from a supplemental voluntary disclosure (wherein the firm discloses its nonaggressive tax planning), firms are likely to voluntarily disclose information that both preempts and supplements the government's mandatory disclosure. Thus, when mandatory disclosures are incomplete, firms will voluntarily issue additional information to remain in control of their disclosure environments.
In order to deter aggressive tax planning, the Australian government mandated public disclosure of three line items from large corporations' tax returns. However, there is no evidence that the mandated disclosure led public firms to pay more taxes (Hoopes, Robinson, and Slemrod 2018). Instead, I find that firms strategically offset expected reputational costs by voluntarily issuing supplemental information. Specifically, when managers expect new reputational costs from the mandated tax return disclosure (wherein the disclosure reveals an unexpectedly low tax liability) and low proprietary costs from a supplemental voluntary disclosure (wherein the firm discloses its nonaggressive tax planning), firms are likely to voluntarily disclose information that both preempts and supplements the government's mandatory disclosure. Thus, when mandatory disclosures are incomplete, firms will voluntarily issue additional information to remain in control of their disclosure environments.