3. Hypothesis Development
Prior research reports mixed evidence on audit
fee and auditor’s independence. This study attempts
to answer question whether audit fee affect auditor’s
opinion. The high audit fee may impair auditor’s
independence since auditors would like to keep good
relation with their clients and are likely to issue
unqualified financial reports. Auditors who have
economic dependence with clients may allow
management to manage their earnings as reported
by Frankel et al. (2002). When auditors receive low
audit fee, they have less economic bond with clients
because audit cost may be higher than audit fee.
Thus, they are not afraid of losing such audit clients
and likely to express modified opinion to financial
statements when they found uncertainty or
problematic issues in clients’ companies. However,
the high audit fee may represent audit quality
because auditors have to perform their works with
professional skepticism and high standards in order
to protect their reputation and avoid litigation risk
(Geiger and Rama, 2003). In other words, the more
uncertain issues in client’s firm, the more audit work
to be performed, leading to higher audit fees.
Besides, Herrmann et al. (2008) report that auditors’
conservatism in Thailand have increased after the
financial crisis due to the adoption of International
Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) and
improvements in corporate governance system.
Thus, the current study expects that high audit fees
represent high audit quality because auditors have to
charge for premium fee when they perform more
audit procedures in order to resolve issues in clients’
companies. Such audit clients are likely to have
going concern and/or unresolved issues and auditors
are likely to express modified auditor’s opinion to
avoid litigation and reputation risk. Therefore, the
first hypothesis is formulated as follows.
H1: Audit clients with modified financial reports pay
higher audit fee than those with unqualified
financial reports.