Tax aggressiveness and the proportion of quantitative information in income tax footnotes

Purpose This paper aims to analyse the determinants of the proportion of quantitative data in financial statement footnote disclosures. Quantitative data represents “hard” information and has been considered to be more persuasive than qualitative data. The primary focus is on income tax footnotes because revenue agents use them as a reference in tax audits, and citizen groups use them to analyse tax inequalities. This study posits that firms with lower effective tax rates (“tax aggressive” firms) disclose less quantitative data in their income tax footnotes. Design/methodology/approach The multivariate analysis uses data from the contents of income tax footnotes extracted from 10-K filings in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). It uses the alphanumeric characters identified in the income tax footnotes to calculate the proportion of quantitative data relative to the entire footnote disclosure as the dependent variable in a multivariate regression analysis. Findings The findings show that firms which avoid more taxes disclose less quantitative data in income tax footnotes after controlling for the readability of the income tax footnotes and the entire annual report. Therefore, firms seem to reduce the publication of measurable data accessible to revenue agencies and citizen groups. Originality/value This analysis provides evidence that firms weigh the financial reporting requirements and tax audit risks when they disclose quantitative income tax data. Also, it supports the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB’s) proposal to require more disaggregated income tax disclosure. To the researcher’s knowledge, this is the first analysis that focuses on the determinants of disclosing quantitative data in income tax footnotes.

‘We Are That In-Between Nation’: Discourses of Deservingness of Hungarian Migrants Working in Institutions of Refugee Accommodation in Germany

The article elaborates on the role of deservingness discourses in regulating membership of non-citizen groups in Germany. Specifically, it focuses on Hungarians working or volunteering in institutions of refugee accommodation in Germany. It asks how personal migration experience and migrant statuses and identities of Hungarian workers are mobilised when recreating discourses of refugee-deservingness. Performance expectations on refugees related to education and employment evoked references to similarities of migration experience, strengthening an empathetic perspective towards refugee clients and students. Deservingness frameworks related to culture were more ambiguous. A ‘mission civilisatrice’, that is educating Muslim Others to European, non-Muslim ways of behaving and thinking, often tied to gender relations, was paralleled by a continuous attempt to challenge and dismantle such discourses of difference and disciplining. These ambivalences of empathetic identification and disciplinary racialisation draw the contours of a characteristic place of (Hungarian) migrant workers in the governance of refugee accommodation in Germany.

After the facts: Producing, using and contesting knowledge in two spatial-environmental conflicts in the Netherlands

While the problematic role of knowledge in controversial policy processes is widely acknowledged, relatively little is known about how protesting citizen groups involved in such controversies construct, mobilize and use knowledge. This article explores these issues in two conflicts about planned interventions in the Netherlands. The first case, about energy policies, concerns protests against plans for shale gas extraction. In the second case, concerning flood risk management, citizens organized protests against a planned ‘bypass’ of the River Waal. To better understand the role of citizen groups as knowledge actors, we analyse how these groups organized and strategized their protests and produced, used and contested knowledge to claim voice in decision-making. The study shows the key role of citizen groups as knowledge actors in contested planning processes, and of their knowledge strategies in internally divided communities. It also shows the importance of the source and type of knowledge and how it is constructed, mobilized and used in various stages of resistance against policy plans.

Chiefs vs. Raiders, Part II

This chapter tells of the decline of the Kansas City Chiefs after they moved to Arrowhead Stadium in 1972. The Chiefs still could beat the Oakland Raiders at home, but coach Hank Stram was finally fired. The Raiders dominated their division but routinely lost during the playoffs, and they were branded as not being able to win the big game. The two football teams’ frustrations coincided with confrontations over Kansas City’s and Oakland’s investments in professional sports. Citizen groups filed legal challenges over Kansas City’s new sports complex and plans for the city’s new Kemper Arena, whereas the Black Panthers used its newspaper to present a comprehensive critique of Oakland’s ruling elite, including the people who built and profited from the Oakland Coliseum.

Public opinion and interest groups’ concerns for organizational survival

A growing number of studies focus on the two-way channels connecting public opinion and interest groups, highlighting how public support affects interest groups’ mobilization, strategies, and influence, while also showing how interest groups manage to shape public opinion. We contribute to this debate, assuming that interest groups are fundamentally survival-maximizing organizations. First, we investigate whether public opinion bears on advocacy groups’ assessment of their own survival prospects. Second, we assess whether public opinion-driven mortality anxiety affects advocacy groups’ choices regarding different lobbying strategies. Empirically, we rely on data from the Comparative Interest Group Survey, including over 2500 interest group respondents across six European Union (EU) countries as well as groups working at the EU level. Our analysis shows that (1) public opinion crucially influences how advocacy groups estimate their chances of survival, particularly for citizen groups and (2) public opinion-related survival concerns stimulate greater relative use of outside lobbying by citizen groups.