Proposed international standard on auditing financial statements of less complex entities: IAASB IAAER roundtables—Breakout 1 authority and groups

This commentary summarizes stakeholder views voiced during roundtables on the 2021 International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board's (IAASB) Exposure Draft: Proposed International Standard on Auditing of Financial Statements of Less Complex Entities (ED LCE). For EDs, IAASB's due process includes seeking stakeholder views in a formal consultation format on a specified number of issues deemed relevant to further improve the proposed standard. Following its mission, the International Association for Accounting Education and Research—together with the IAASB—facilitated roundtables linking audit practitioners, academics, and financial statements users. The three roundtables followed a structured agenda including the same (but not all) topics on which the IAASB seeks views. In this commentary, we summarize views heard during the first roundtable breakout session focused on authority and groups and provide recommendations to the IAASB regarding the way forward.     

When Less is More: Consumers Prefer Brands that Donate More in Relative versus Absolute Terms

Marketing Letters - When trying to make a good impression on consumers through charitable giving, is it better for brands to maximize the overall dollars they donate or how much they give in...     

Operating Lease as Alternative Financing for REITs: a Viable Strategy or a Sign of Trouble?

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - Extant REIT research largely overlooks operating leases as an alternative source of financing. In this study, we hand-collect lease information of...     

Real-time revenue and firm disclosure

Review of Accounting Studies - We examine firm disclosure choice when information is received on a real-time, continuous basis. We use transaction-level credit and debit card sales for a sample of...     

IRS Private Letter Rulings: Initial Evidence on Determinants and Consequences

This study examines the determinants of firms' requests for Private Letter Rulings (PLRs) from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and their impact on firms' cash holdings. Our results show that PLR requests tend to be made by firms with more active tax planning, more acquisitions, higher analyst following, higher leverage, and less in-house tax expertise. We also show that firms with IRS audit red flags are less likely to request a PLR. We use a difference-in-difference approach to assess changes in cash holdings following PLR requests and report a decrease in cash holdings for PLR firms, consistent with the notion that PLRs act to reduce tax uncertainty. Our study provides the first empirical evidence about the determinants of PLR requests and complements prior work on tax uncertainty and cash holdings (Hanlon, Maydew and Saavedra, 2017).