Taxpayers' preference for type of advice from tax practitioner: A preliminary examination

Tax practitioners play an important role in tax compliance. The tax literature shows that they assist the government to enforce tax law when it is unambiguous but assist taxpayers to exploit tax law when it is ambiguous. Tax practitioners, however, assert that it is the taxpayers who insist on aggressive tax reporting. On the contrary, some studies conducted in North America found that taxpayers prefer conservative advice. This study found that taxpayers, who are predominantly small business owners, agree more with the conservative advice given by tax practitioners. Interestingly, they also agree, although less strongly, with aggressive advice from their practitioners. The results show that there is a tendency for those who disagree with their practitioner's advice to terminate their service, although there is no clear evidence to indicate that this only occurs when their desire for conservative advice is not met. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.