Career Concern and Tax Preparer Fraud

Chao Yang

Liansheng Wu

and

Xianhui Bo

This paper focuses on the effects of career concern on fraud among tax return preparers. A two-stage model is built to ascertain whether the propensity of tax preparers to cooperate with taxpayers in underpaying tax can be decreased if the revealed fraud behavior increases the probability of being audited by the tax agency in the following period. After solving the unique SPNE, this effect is shown to exist.