An Empirical Analysis of the Ethical Reasoning of Tax Practitioners

Elaine Doyle (), Jane Frecknall Hughes () and Barbara Summers

Journal of Business Ethics, 2013, vol. 114, issue 2, 325-339

Abstract: How tax practitioners approach ethical dilemmas remains generally unexplored in academic literature. We use here Rest’s original Defining Issues Test (Development in judging moral issues. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979 ; Moral development. Advances in research and theory. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1986 ), combined with a tax context-specific test and in conjunction with a control group of non-tax specialists, to examine tax practitioners’ moral reasoning in a social and tax context. We investigate: (i) the effect of a tax context on issues raised (finding that practitioners generally reason at lower levels than in social scenarios); (ii) whether the profession attracts people who reason at certain levels (finding that it does not); and (iii) whether practitioners are affected by training/socialization in their professional context (finding that that they are). Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: DIT; Moral reasoning; Revenue practitioner; Tax practice; Tax practitioner (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-012-1347-x

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