March 2: Business Prof - Accounting Isn’t Just About Numbers
“People think accounting is about numbers, and at first glance it is. But what lies beneath is human behaviour and judgment, and I want to understand more about human behaviour through an interdisciplinary lens,” says Sandra Scott, newly appointed professor in the Department of Business.
People think accounting is about numbers, and at first glance it is. One area of human behaviour that’s caught her attention is related to tax policy. A case in point is the recent election victory of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who has vowed not to increase taxes but promised to expand infrastructure construction in his campaign. The paradox, Scott says, is that “nobody wants to pay more taxes, but people do want to see services maintained, and often increased. I think humans are generally pretty rational, and it should be obvious that the system can’t be sustained if we all take services and don’t contribute enough through our taxes.
However, some people don’t seem to make that connection, and Scott wants to understand more about why people behave this way. She’s collaborating with Thaddeus Hwong of York University in a multi-year empirical research project to run experiments on taxpayers’ attitudes toward paying taxes. “We have to think about the human costs of keeping taxes low, not just the dollars and cents,” she stresses.