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The effect of experience on tax professionals' knowledge structure and performance in a research task
Abstract
Taxpayers often engage their public accountants to resolve or plan for transactions which involve complex technical tax issues or significant amounts of monetary risk. One method tax professionals frequently use in solving these problems is to search commercial tax information services for relevant tax authority to document and justify the positions taken. Because this relevant tax authority affects important decision making, academic researchers have begun examining the determinants of tax research performance or expertise. This paper investigates whether experience is associated with changes in tax professionals' knowledge structure by examining differences in tax research performance. While prior tax research suggests that tax professionals structure their technical tax knowledge topically, this study posits that while they initially organize their knowledge on a topical-basis, experience develops an additional knowledge structure organized by Code section. This change occurs because tax professionals regularly use the structure of the tax law, which is organized by Code section, in searching for relevant tax authority and documenting their research conclusions. The rivalry between these alternative knowledge structures is tested through manipulating the information search method (topical versus Code section) during an information search and comparing tax professionals with different experience levels. The study used tax professionals and graduate tax students to perform an Internet-based search for relevant tax authority. The study extends the extant research by providing a more complete understanding of the effect of experience on tax professionals' knowledge structures. Taken together, the results indicate that experience creates or refines a set of information search strategies or procedures, organized by Code section, that are useful in solving tax research questions. Moreover, it appears that ability plays an important role in the evolution of these search procedures. The study helps provide a better understanding of how well tax professionals make decisions. The results have implications for the educational methods used for both new and continuing professionals as well as incremental improvements in the technical organization of the commercial tax services used by professionals in searching for relevant tax authority. The findings also extend Libby and Tan's (1994) result, that researchers must jointly model the determinants of knowledge and performance in order to separate the effects of ability and experience, to the tax problem solving domain. During the information search, ability differentially affects the experience by information search method interaction. This finding suggests that ability is an important determinant in developing these search strategies and that ability indirectly affects performance in tasks where opportunities for learning exist.
Subject Area
Accounting
Recommended Citation
Barrick, John A, "The effect of experience on tax professionals' knowledge structure and performance in a research task" (1998). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9829513.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9829513