Keith joined the Department of Accounting faculty in Fall 2020 as an Assistant Professor. He teaches Individual Taxation (ACCT 3210/5210) and Taxation of Business Entities (ACCT 4250/6250). He comes to UT from Southern Illinois University – Carbondale with four years of experience teaching taxation and financial accounting courses.
Keith’s research focuses on taxation, corporate governance, and the intersection of the two. His dissertation “CEO Decision Horizon and Corporate Tax Avoidance” focuses on how chief executive officer decision horizon affects corporate tax avoidance and finds that executives with shorter decision horizons are associated with lower levels of tax avoidance compared to firms with long-horizon CEOs. Recently his paper “The Relation Between Equity Incentives and Earnings Management through Permanently Reinvested Foreign Earnings for U.S. Multinational Corporations” was accepted at Advances in Taxation. The paper examines whether the equity incentives of management are associated with an increased use of PRE and finds strong evidence that the changes in PRE are positively associated with the portion of top managers’ compensation that is tied to stock performance. This relationship is strongest for firms that met or beat forecasts by using PRE to inflate income, suggesting that equity compensation incentivizes managers to opportunistically use PRE.
His teaching and research interests are rooted in his professional experiences. Before beginning the doctoral program, Keith worked six years as a public accountant at Murphy & McInvale CPAs servicing the greater Metro-Atlanta area. He still maintains his Georgia CPA license. Keith holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Texas Tech University and Bachelor of Business Administration and Master of Accountancy degrees from Kennesaw State University.
