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This study examines factors that influenced public companies to retain or dismiss their audit firms as tax service providers during the years immediately surrounding the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002. We find a positive relation between a company’s tax and operating complexity and the probability that it retained its auditor-provided tax services, suggesting that complexity increases the potential benefits from knowledge spillover relative to the costs from perceived auditor independence impairment. We find a positive relation between the strength of a company’s corporate governance and the probability that it retained auditor-provided tax services, suggesting that companies with strong governance expected benefits from knowledge spillover to exceed costs from perceived auditor independence impairment. Although we find no direct relation between auditor tenure and the decision to retain auditor-provided tax services, we do find a significant negative association between auditor retention and high nontax, nonaudit services (NAS) fees, and between auditor retention and the joint effect of long auditor tenure and high nontax NAS fees. Thus, firms with low auditor independence and long audit tenure are less likely to retain their auditor for tax services than are firms with high nontax NAS fees alone.

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This study examines topics currently addressed in the introductory Accounting Information Systems (AIS) course and makes comparisons to past studies. The study includes an examination of 12 current AIS textbooks, syllabi from current AIS instructors, and the results of a survey of AIS faculty and professionals. The divisions of topics in the books and on the syllabi suggest that introduction to systems, internal control, and transaction processing are the most important topics to be covered. After these topics, the rankings diverge. The results of this study suggest that the emphasis historically placed on system analysis and design, while still important, is somewhat less than in the past. This was also apparent from the results of the authors' surveys of AIS faculty and professionals who use technology in their jobs. Both faculty and professionals agree that greater importance should be placed on teaching internal control and transactions processing, while moderate importance should be placed on software and hardware issues. Professionals ranked ethics and Internet education of greater importance than did faculty, while faculty rated computer fraud (which may tie in with ethics) and database management systems of greater importance than did the professionals. Professionals also placed higher importance on teaching software applications (particularly spreadsheet applications) than did faculty.

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