Ethical reasoning in tax practice: Law or is there more?

Private sector tax practitioners are often accused of unethical behavior in developing contrived avoidance arrangements. Such arrangements usually comply with the letter law but contravene its underlying (often unstated) ‘spirit’. Prior research comparing ethical reasoning private practitioners, government revenue and a non-tax (control) group both social contexts found no significant differences between them context. However, where dilemmas were concerned, demonstrated lower levels reasoning. We seek here to examine whether this difference results from regard have for – other words, they order orientation when facing issues or professional context offers motives. Using Defining Issues Test (DIT) tax-specific version DIT, we test there is dominance contexts, comparison control group.