Underreporting Time: An analysis Of Current Tax Practice

Abstract

Public accounting firms use self-reported time from past projects to prepare time budgets for future projects, which, in turn, are used to schedule and evaluate personnel.  Underreporting the amount of time actually worked may result in unrealistic future time budgets, high employee turnover, and lost revenues.  The results of the research described in this paper indicate that underreporting by tax specialists is far more widespread and extensive than prior research suggests.