Tax Client Goals, Regulatory Pressure, and Professional Decision-Making

Drawing on goal theory, I illuminate how client preferences become internalized goals for tax professionals and how these client goals influence the motivated reasoning and ultimate decision-making of tax professionals. Using this theoretical framework, I then utilize an experiment to explore how the presence of salient situational factors – goal specificity, goal progress, and regulatory pressure – influence tax professionals’ decision-making. The results suggest that, as a result of their roles as both client advocates and CPAs, tax professionals default to non-specific “do your best” goals regardless of client preference specificity. Additionally, I find that increased regulatory pressure may curb aggressive professional advice by introducing a salient marginal cost to recommending a risky tax position. This study contributes to the literature on tax professional decision-making by clarifying how and when client preferences form internalized goals for tax professionals and how these goals shape subsequent decision-making.