August 22, 2017

Accounting professor wins award for tax planning paper

"Reputational concerns about tax planning are difficult to test with archival data," says award recipient Terry Shevlin. "In our paper, we analyzed direct survey results from almost 600 corporate tax executives."

Terry Shevlin, professor of accounting and associate dean of research & doctoral programs at UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business, has received the 2017 Tax Manuscript Award from the American Taxation Association. The paper, “Incentives for Tax Planning & Avoidance: Evidence from the Field,” published in The Accounting Review, describes the results from a survey of about 600 executives regarding the incentives and disincentives for corporate tax planning and avoidance. Sixty-nine percent of respondents viewed reputational concerns as “important” or “very important” factors in explaining why firms do not adopt potential tax planning strategies. The effects of financial accounting incentives on tax planning decisions were also examined. Shevlin was recognized during the ATA’s annual conference on Aug. 7 in San Diego, marking the fourth time he’s received this award, having been honored in 2004, 1995 and 1992. Michelle Hanlon and Nemit Shroff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Graham of Duke University are study co-authors.

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