Do fees for non-audit services compromise auditor’s independence and result
in reduced quality of financial reporting? The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
presumes that some fees do and bans these services for audit clients. Also, some
registrants voluntarily restrict their audit firms from providing legally permitted
non-audit services. Assuming that restatements of previously issued financial
statements reflect low-quality financial reporting, we investigate detailed
fees for restating registrants for 1995 to 2000 and for similar nonrestating registrants.
We do not find a statistically significant positive association between
fees for either financial information systems design and implementation or
internal audit services and restatements, but we do find some such association
for unspecified non-audit services and restatements.We find a significant negative
association between tax services fees and restatements, consistent with
net benefits from acquiring tax services from a registrant’s audit firm. The
significant associations are driven primarily by larger registrants.