Dividend Taxation and the Cost of New Share Issues

Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 1, 1987

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 2008

In recent times a number of countries have initiated some important tax reforms to eliminate the distortions of double taxation. In this context, Australia adopted a dividend imputation system in 1987, while the US employed the 1986 Tax Reform Act (TRA).

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2005

The Financial Review, 1996

The capital investmenudividend decision of the firm is analyzed under alternative assumptions about the system of dividend taxation. Relative to the classical system, imputation can yield (1) more disagreement amongst shareholders as regards the optimal investment plan, (2) less capital investment on aggregate and (3) fewer gains from mergers. Moreover, in contrast to the classical system, shareholders with high marginal tax rates can be more disadvantaged by dividend deferral than shareholders with low marginal tax rates.

Corporate Ownership and Control, 2008

The present paper takes advantage of two important changes in the Canadian taxation of capital gains in Canada to examine the interaction between taxation and corporate dividend policy. Our empirical results suggest that Canadian firms did not increase their dividend payout after the reduction of capital gains exemption in 1987; however, they did so when the remaining $100,000 capital gains exemption in 1994 was eliminated. Moreover, we find that firms with high level of control concentration tend to pay fewer dividends. Our finding suggests taxation does influence corporate dividend policy.

2008

Financial Management, 1990

2009

We analyze the effects of changes in dividend tax policy using a life-cycle model of the firm, in which new firms first access equity markets, then grow internally, and finally pay dividends when they have reached steady state. We find that unanticipated permanent changes in tax rates have only small effects on aggregate investment, since macroeconomic dynamics are dominated by mature firms for which dividend taxation is not distortionary.

The Journal of Finance, 2002

This paper examines the impact of a major change in dividend taxation introduced in the UK in July 1997. The reform was structured in such a way that the immediate impact fell almost entirely on the largest investor class in the UK, namely pension funds. We analyse the behaviour of share prices around the ex-dividend day both before and after the reform to test clientele effects and the impact of taxation on the valuation of companies. We find strong clientele effects in the UK, which are consistent with the distortions introduced by the tax system (before the reform dividend income was taxadvantaged in the UK). We also find significant changes in the valuation of dividend income after the reform, in particular for high-yielding companies. These results provide strong support for the hypothesis that taxation affects the valuation of companies, and that pension funds were the effective marginal investors for high-yielding companies.

The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 1988

This paper explores implications of differential personal taxation for corporate investment and dividend decisions. The personal tax advantage of dividend deferral causes shareholders to generally prefer greater investment in real assets under internal as opposed to external financing. Furthermore, dividend deferral is shown to be costly at the corporate level, causing shareholders in different tax brackets at times to disagree over optimal investment and dividend policies under internal financing. The profitability of internallyfinanced security investment is shown to depend on a security's tax status and shareholders' tax brackets. However, externally-financed security purchases are unprofitable from a tax standpoint.

The Canadian Journal of Economics, 1995

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Social Science Research Network, 2014

Policymakers frequently try to use dividend tax changes to affect payout policy. However, empirical evidence finds the effect to be much smaller than theory implies. Using identification strategy that exploits a large exogenous shock to dividend taxation and comprehensive proprietary data on ownership structure and owners' tax preference, we show that absent of conflicting objectives between managers and owners, dividend taxation has a large effect on payouts. The impact becomes insignificant as the number of owners increases. Differential tax preferences across owners is one factor. However, even when owners have the same tax preferences, disperse ownership significantly reduces the impact of dividend taxation; plausibly due to coordination problems across owners and conflicting objectives of owners and managers. Our results explain why previous evidence on the impact of dividend taxation has been so elusive. Taxation has a first order impact on payout policy, but disperse ownership mutes its impact substantially.

The Accounting Review, 2013

ABSTRACT: We argue that reductions in shareholder taxes should lower the cost of equity capital more for financially constrained firms than for other companies. Consistent with this prediction, we find that, following the 1997 (TRA) and the 2003 (JGTRRA) cuts in U.S. individual shareholder taxes, financially constrained firms enjoyed larger reductions in their cost of equity capital than did other firms. The results are consistent with the incidence of the tax reductions falling mostly on firms with both pressing needs for capital and disproportionate ownership by individuals, the only shareholders who benefited from the legislations. The paper provides a partial explanation for the seemingly puzzling finding that, following the unprecedented 2003 reduction in dividend tax rates, non-dividend-paying firms outperformed dividend-paying firms. The results suggest that it was not dividend status that mattered, but financial constraint, a common attribute of non-dividend-paying companies...

Journal of Public Economics, 2017

We test whether dividend taxes affect corporate investments. We exploit Sweden's 2006 dividend tax cut of 10 percentage points for closely held corporations and five percentage points for widely held corporations. Using rich administrative panel data and triple-difference estimators, we find that this dividend tax cut affects allocation of corporate investment. Cashconstrained firms increase investment after the dividend tax cut relative to cash-rich firms. Reallocation is stronger among closely held firms that experience a larger tax cut. This result is explained by higher nominal equity in cash-constrained firms and by higher dividends in cash-rich firms after the tax cut. The heterogeneous investment responses imply that the dividend tax cut raises efficiency by improving allocation of investment.

Journal of Economics and Finance, 2012

We develop a valuation model that integrates corporate capital structure and dividend payout policies. The resulting "extended" Miller (J Financ 32:261-297, 1977) model explicitly incorporates the different tax rates on corporate income, personal interest, dividends, and capital gains. We apply the model to ten different U.S. tax regimes since 1979 and generate several testable predictions. When the dividend tax rate exceeds the capital gains tax rate, dividend payout can partially offset value-enhancing effects of leverage. When the two rates are close, dividend payout loses its moderating influence. Using the S&P 1500 universe, we obtain empirical results that are consistent with the model's predictions.