No abstract

This paper reports the results of anempirical study examining the relationship between participation in anaccounting internship and increased job opportunities. Most prior studies haveexamined the benefits of internship programs while in school or the benefits ofinternships on professional learning, socialization, and personalcharacteristics in preparing students for entry into the profession. There hasbeen a paucity of empirical studies examining the relationship betweeninternships and job opportunities, which is a primary reason why students enterinternship programs, schools establish them, and employers hire interns. We surveyedprofessional employees below the manager level among three Big 4 firms and a largeregional CPA firm, and found that the effect of internship experience on jobopportunities depends upon the circumstances. The results indicate thatemploying firms highly value internship experience and that internshipexperience is useful for students in getting job opportunities whether or not theystay with the internship firm.

No abstract

We examine three categories of private foundations with tax incentives to increase their qualifying distributions: (1) foundations barely qualifying for the 1 percent tax rate on net investment income, (2) foundations barely avoiding the tax on undistributed income, and (3) foundations that pay an excise tax on undistributed income. We expect tax-motivated foundations to use allocations across expense categories and over time to increase their qualifying distributions. Our sample consists of a balanced panel of 1,974 private foundations over a 12-year period from 1995 through 2006, resulting in 23,688 foundation years. We find that foundations barely meeting the 1 percent tax benchmark use tax-motivated allocations both across expense categories and over time to increase qualifying distributions. In contrast, foundations barely avoiding or minimizing the tax on undistributed income use set-aside amounts to allocate distributions over time, but do not use allocations across expense categories to increase qualifying distributions.

This study provides further evidence about whether accounting choice dedsions reflect a consistent strategy to manage income by investigating the relation between methods used in finandal reports and lobbying positions on accounting for income taxes. A numerical income-strategy score is calculated for each lobbyist based on whether the firm chose an income-increasing or income-decreasing alternative for the following: depreciation, inventory, investment tax credit, and pension amortization. We find that firms lobbying for no tax allocation, the most income-increasing alternative, have higher average income strategies (more income increasing) than firms lobbying for comprehensive allocation, the most income-decreasing altemative. Combining the firms favoring either no allocation or partial allocation (due to the conceptual similarity of these altematives), we find that their average income strategy score is also higher than firms favoring comprehensive allocation. Further, firms favoring discounting deferred taxes, which would ordinarily increase net income by reducing the deferred portion of income tax expense, employ more income-increasing strategies than firms opposed to discounting. In contrast, the hypothesized relationship was not found between income strategy and when the benefits antidpated from the use of a net operating loss carryforward should be recognized. Nevertheless, the combined lobbying positions differ significantly between both the upper and lower third and upper and middle third of the firms classified by their income strategy scores. We also provide analyses to examine whether income strategies can be used to predict lobbying positions. We find that the assodations are not suffidently strong to do so. R6sumi. Les decisions relatives aux choix comptables sont-elles le reflet d'une stratdgie uniforme visant la gestion des bdn^fices ? Les auteurs jettent un ddairagenouveau sur cette question, en analysant la relation entre les mdthodes utilisees dans les rapports fmanders, et ils approfondissent Egalement celle des positions de lobbying relatives k la comptabilisation des imp6ts sur Ie b^n^fice. Les auteurs attribuent une note num^rique k la strat6gie de bdn^fice de chaque lobbyiste, selon que l'entreprise a opt^ pour une methode qui accrott ou decroit Ie b^n^fice, k regard des ^I^ments suivants : I'amortissement, les stocks, le credit d'imp6t k