Title: Did the public company oversight board's restrictions on auditor-provided tax services reduce companies' tax avoidance?

Authors: Mahmoud Ahmed

Addresses: Faculty of Commerce, Sohag University, Egypt

Abstract: In 2005, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) implemented restrictions on auditor-provided tax services (APTS), which resulted in a major decrease in the provision of these services in 2005 and 2006. The central research question in this study is whether these restrictions have affected tax avoidance after firms reduced their APTS. Using a difference-in-difference design, this paper investigates and finds that reducing APTS leads to a significant decrease in tax avoidance. These results are consistent with the notion that the PCAOB's restrictions, intended chiefly to enhance auditor independence, also led to this significant decrease in tax avoidance.

Keywords: auditor-provided tax services; APTS; tax avoidance; Public Company Accounting Oversight Board; PCAOB.

DOI: 10.1504/AAJFA.2023.128622

Afro-Asian Journal of Finance and Accounting, 2023 Vol.13 No.1, pp.1 - 21

Received: 22 Feb 2021
Accepted: 13 Oct 2021
Published online: 31 Jan 2023 *