A note on perceptions of auditors’ internal control report mandated by the PCAOB: Can reformatting the report enhance perceived value added?

The auditor’s report is a critical link in communicating financial data to users. Because of substantial audit costs incurred in integrated audits, the perceived value added by the auditor’s report becomes even more important. The auditor’s report prescribed by Auditing Standard No. 2 (and the new Auditing Standard No. 5) issued by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) includes a limitations paragraph. The SAS 58 audit report format that has been in use over 15 years does not contain a limitations paragraph. The SAS 58 report likely serves as a mental frame of reference (a referent report) for users evaluating other independent auditor’s report formats relating to assurance services, including the AS2 and AS5 reports. Whether inclusion of a limitations paragraph could adversely affect the users’ evaluation of the AS2 report is the focus of this study. In light of the publicity given to fraudulent financial reporting and other prevailing economic/environmental conditions, it is reasonable for users to expect that the auditor’s report provide a high degree of assurance regarding material fraud.We extend the [Foster, B. P., McClain, G., Shastri, T. (2005). A note on Pre-Sarbanes-Oxley Act users’ and auditors’ perceptions of a limitations paragraph in the auditor’s internal control report. Research in Accounting Regulations, 18, 195-217] study, by focusing on the AS2 report using data obtained about user perceptions from a field experiment conducted with MBA students. Results suggest that users perceive that an internal control report format without the limitations paragraph will enhance the readability and reliability of the report, and reduce the level of accommodation (additional information) required for decision making. Users perceive that the auditors’ exposure/liability is likely to remain substantially the same whether or not the report format includes a limitations paragraph. Also, users perceive that incorporating fraud wording would further enhance the readability and reliability dimensions of the internal control report format without the limitations paragraph. Taken collectively, the auditor’s report format with fraud wording, but without the limitations paragraph likely maximizes economic benefit accruing to users by minimizing their information risk. Policy-making bodies may find the results and approach taken in this study useful to evaluate report formats for assurance services.     

论政策绩效审计的本质

本文分析了美国财务报告内部控制审计准则的发展,指出了征求意见稿相对于第2号审计准则的变化、第5号审计准则相对于征求意见稿的变化,以期对我国内部控制审计准则的制定提供借鉴.     

会计师事务所国际化对审计质量的影响

基于中国会计师事务所在美国公众公司会计监督委员会（PCAOB）注册视角,系统探究会计师事务所国际化对审计质量的影响。研究发现,中国会计师事务所国际化促使审计质量提升。进一步结合审计师能力、审计师声誉等机制检验结果说明会计师事务所国际化通过学习效应、声誉效应等渠道提高审计质量。研究表明会计师事务所国际化有助于提高审计质量,对于加强信息披露质量与完善资本市场建设具有积极作用,为会计师事务所国际化实践提供理论参考。     

Do PCAOB Inspections Improve the Quality of Internal Control Audits?

We investigate whether Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspections affect the quality of internal control audits. Our research design improves on prior studies by exploiting both cross‐sectional and time‐series variation in the content of PCAOB inspection reports, while also controlling for audit firm and year fixed effects, effectively achieving a difference‐in‐differences research design. We find that when PCAOB inspectors report higher rates of deficiencies in internal control audits, auditors respond by increasing the issuance of adverse internal control opinions. We also find that auditors issue more adverse internal control opinions to clients with concurrent misstatements, who thus genuinely warrant adverse opinions. We further find that higher inspection deficiency rates lead to higher audit fees, consistent with PCAOB inspections prompting auditors to undertake costly remediation efforts. Taken together, our results are consistent with the PCAOB inspections improving the quality of internal control audits by prompting auditors to remediate deficiencies in their audits of internal controls.     

An investigation about origins: A brief history of the PCAOB'S regulatory model

The scandals involving Enron, WorldCom, and Arthur Andersen are frequently cited as among the principal reasons for the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act [Pub.L. 107–204, 116 Stat. 745, enacted July 30, 2002] (SOX) as well as the genesis of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The PCAOB is a relatively new agency that was created to a play vital role as the regulator for auditors of U.S. public companies. For such an important organization, its background remains relatively unexamined. This paper seeks to extend the existing literature by examining the historical origins of the PCAOB and identifying the regulatory influences and prototypes of this regulatory agency. Was the organization's regulatory structure chosen arbitrarily? Were there various events as well as exemplar entities in the preceding decades that played an integral role in the eventual creation of the PCAOB? This research seeks to answer these questions.     

PCAOB Inspections and the Differential Audit Quality Effect for Big 4 and Non–Big 4 US Auditors*

In this study, we investigate whether the increase in regulatory scrutiny epitomized by the initial PCAOB inspection impacted audit quality differentially for Big 4 and non–Big 4 auditors to better understand the consequences of PCAOB inspections for different audit firm types. Because of competing views on the effect of PCAOB inspections, the relation between PCAOB inspections and the audit quality differential between Big 4 and other auditors is an empirical issue. Empirically, we take the endogenous choice of auditor as a given and utilize a difference‐in‐differences specification that takes into account the staggered timing of the initial PCAOB inspection for different‐sized auditors in the United States. Our results suggest that the initial PCAOB inspection improved audit quality more for Big 4 auditors than for other annually inspected or triennially inspected non–Big 4 auditors. We also examine annually and triennially inspected non–Big 4 auditors separately, and find that the pre‐post Big 4/non–Big 4 differential audit quality effect is more pronounced for the triennially inspected non–Big 4 firms. In the larger context of the highly concentrated US audit market, our findings that PCAOB inspections accentuate the Big 4/non–Big 4 audit quality differential are of potential interest to public company audit clients contemplating an auditor change, investors interested in learning about the consequences of PCAOB inspections, regulators concerned about the Big 4 dominance of the US audit market, and academics investigating audit quality differences.     

The costs and benefits of retirement policies at U.S. audit firms

The mandatory retirement age within U.S. Big 4 audit firms ranges from 55 to 62, which has attracted controversy and legal scrutiny. The potential costs of an earlier retirement age include the loss of established networks, experience, and expertise. However, studies in non-U.S. jurisdictions conclude that partners nearing retirement disengage from their work, which manifests in lower audit quality. Using intensive hand-collected data on the age of 3,148 U.S. audit partners, we provide the first evidence of the costs and benefits of mandatory retirement policies at U.S. audit firms. We find that audit quality does not vary, but that fees are significantly higher for U.S. partners approaching retirement. These findings suggest that U.S. mandatory retirement policies are forcing out experienced revenue earners that are producing audit quality equivalent to younger partners. Additional analysis reveal that partner retirements are mechanisms to promote and grow the client portfolios of younger and female audit partners, and therefore increase partner diversity. Our additional analysis of non-U.S. audit partners leading audits of U.S. listed companies shows that partners approaching retirement are associated with lower audit quality across certain measures. This suggests that the audit quality of older U.S. partners is superior to their non-U.S. counterparts.     

Did PCAOB rules on ethics,independence, and tax services influence financial reporting for income taxes?

The PCAOB Rules on Ethics, Independence, and Tax Services prohibited accounting firms from providing aggressive tax-position transactions to their audit clients. We exploit this setting to examine whether the scrutiny of the PCAOB affects companies’ financial reporting for income tax accounts. We find robust evidence that the overall quality of the income tax accrual increased after companies significantly reduced auditor-provided tax service (APTS) fees in response to the regulation. We show that this improvement is a function of companies’ pre-regulation tax aggressiveness. In addition, we find evidence that after the fee reductions, tax-aggressive companies increased financial statement reserves for uncertain income tax positions without changing tax-aggressive decisions. Overall, our findings are consistent with an improvement in the financial reporting for income taxes under regulatory scrutiny which is more pronounced for companies that were tax aggressive in the pre-regulation period.     

PCAOB审计师内部控制测评流程和方法

本文对公众公司会计监督委员会（PCAOB）出台的内部控制测评标准中的测评流程和一般方法作了概括性介绍，并在此基础上提出对我国修订内部控制审计标准的几点启示。     

The effect of disclosing audit quality control deficiencies on non-audit tax services: Evidence from Deloitte’s 2007 PCAOB Part II inspection report

We examine whether public disclosure of Deloitte 2007 PCAOB Part II report, which identifies quality control deficiencies related to audits of income tax accounts, affects Deloitte’s auditor-provided tax services (APTS). Using a difference-in-differences model, we document a 17 percent lower likelihood of Deloitte’s audit clients employing APTS relative to clients of other annually inspected firms when the report is made public. We also find that the dampening effect of publicly disclosing the Part II report on Deloitte’s APTS is more evident among audit clients paying higher non-audit fees to auditors and those with more complex tax planning. These results suggest that revealing income tax-specific quality control deficiencies prompts audit clients to revise upward (downward) their expected costs (benefits) of perceived auditor independence impairment (knowledge spillover) stemming from APTS. Overall, our study suggests that public disclosure of audit firm-wide quality control deficiencies pertaining to audits of income tax accounts imposes a collateral damage to the inspected firm’s non-audit tax services, thereby providing a more complete understanding of the consequences of the PCAOB’s communications about quality control deficiencies in Part II reports.