This paper analyses a previously unexamined but nonetheless important facet of modern society -the nature and impact of the relationship between in-house tax professionals in large multinational organizations, and the external business, tax and regulatory environments within which they operate. Drawing on face-to-face interviews conducted with senior tax executives in US multinational enterprises (MNEs), we uncover the social reality of the world in which MNEs' tax executives operate, and find that these tax professionals are a powerful, elite group of knowledge experts who can significantly shape tax law and practices. We analyze the activities of these experts who, although working largely in the shadows of their organizations, are very much engaged in constructing and shaping the wider institutional environment. From a theoretical perspective that brings together institutional work and the endogeneity of law, we find these elite professionals engaging in subtle and diffuse exercise of power at a micro level within their organizations, a meso level between organizations within the field and at a macro level within the wider external environment. This has important implications for our broader understanding of the tax and regulatory environments which corporate actors inhabit.

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The Revenue Online Service (ROS) is one of the first e-government initiatives introduced in Ireland. The primary purpose of this paper is to examine this reform initiative in the Irish Revenue, assess it through the lens of the New Public Management (NPM) and e-government literatures and to critically assess whether its implementation can be deemed 'a success story'. Many of the components of NPM were evident in the introduction of ROS which facilitated its implementation: decentralisation, the use of private sector styles of management, an emphasis on performance measurement and a search for efficiencies. ROS has, inter alia, transformed both access to taxation information for taxpayers and their agents, and the system of tax payment and filing in Ireland. Assessing its implementation in terms of the objectives of an e-government initiative, ROS is 'a success story', and the Irish Revenue organisation has clearly benefited from its introduction in many ways. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that tax/accounting practitioners are also beneficiaries of this e-government initiative. However, a critical analysis of the findings of this study contests the idea that ROS is an unqualified success story.

Against the background of increasing regulation and spotlight on the tax position of MNEs