Auditors' and Tax Specialists' Interprofessional Collaboration During Audit Engagements: Implications for Audit Production and Audit Quality

Abstract

Tax specialists are often part of interprofessional teams that conduct financial statement audits, yet little is documented about their role and collaboration with auditors during these engagements or their contributions to audit quality. Our interviews with 33 highly experienced audit and tax professionals reveal variation in tax specialists’ roles during audits. Further, we find that auditors and tax specialists perceive a greater need for interdependence of expertise, particularly across different types of tax experts, due to increased tax specialization and global tax complexity. However, our interviewees acknowledge that power dynamics and differing attitudes toward shared goals and partnership affect the collaboration process. Interviewees also report instances where ineffective collaboration impacted audit quality. Collectively, we document how auditor and tax specialists’ collaboration (or lack of) influences both audit production and quality, providing insight for practice, regulators, and research regarding tax specialists’ audit involvement and extending the interprofessional collaboration literature to accounting.

Keywords: tax specialists, interprofessional collaboration, audit production, audit quality

JEL Classification: L84, M40, M42