and considered as non-audit income such as advices to management, tax and accounting services (Adeyemi &
Olowookere, 2012). Auditor’s independence can be defined as the conditional probability of reporting a
discovered breach of contract (Adeyemi & Olowookere, 2012). DeAngelo (1981) defined auditor independence
as the ability to avoid biases and willingness to report a truthful opinion about the fairness of the financial
statements. A highly quality audit should reduce stakeholders groups’ uncertainty associated with financial
statement prepared by managers (Adeyemi & Olowookere, 2012).
Increasing competition among public accounting firms, following stagnation of external audit revenues in the
1980s, has forced the expansion of Non-Audit Services (NAS) as alternative sources of revenues for these firms.
For example, Weil and Tannebaum (2001) showed that companies paid NAS fees, as much as three times the
amount paid for external audit services using a sample of 307 Standard and Poor’s 500 Consequently, auditor
independence is compromised when clients pay for non-audit services.