Abstract
Public accounting firms' involvement in non-audit services for audit clients has been the subject of recent congressional hearings and discussions in the financial literature. Our purpose here is to determine the extent to which large public accounting firms provide different quantities and types of non-audit services to audit clients. This will allow us to infer the potentially different effects of prohibiting firms from providing specific non-audit services to audit clients. While summary statistics for total non-audit services are available,' these statistics include non-audit services for both audit and non-audit clients. Providing non-audit services for non-audit clients does not present an audit independence problem, which was the major concern of congressional hearings and discussions about non-audit services. Since available literature' indicates that non-audit services for non-audit clients can be large, an examination of non-audit services to audit clients seems useful. Furthermore, available summary statistics aggregate different types of services, some of which may have a greater impact on auditor independence than other services. The first section of this paper provides a description of current disclosure requirements for public accounting firms' involvement in non-audit
Published Version
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