This paper analyzes the economic effects of different income splitting rules for closely held corporations and sole proprietorships/partnerships in a tax system with a dual income tax. We conclude that the tax rules for closed corporations offer roughly the same cost of capital as for widely...

This paper reconsiders Sinn’s (1991) nucleus theory of the corporation by comparing two different regimes for the equity trap. In the first of these, all cash paid to the shareholders is taxed as dividends, in the second, shareholders are allowed a tax-free return of capital contributed...

Under the Nordic dual income tax system, the taxpayer's total tax bill depends not only on his total income but also on the division of that income between capital income and labor income. This has created new room for tax avoidance, especially for active owners of (closed) corporations. For...

This paper reconsiders the effects of dividend taxation. Particular attention is paid to the form of the “equity trap”, that is, the extent to which cash paid to the shareholders must be taxed as dividends. Our analysis shows that Sinn’s (1991) criticism of the well-known King and...

This paper examines how the distortions caused by dividend taxation depend on whether or not shareholders can recover their original equity injections without being subject to the dividend tax. We point out the alternative assumptions in the literature on this, and we compare two different tax...

In an article in International Tax and Public Finance, Peter Birch Sørensen (2005) gives an in-depth account of the new Norwegian Shareholder Tax, which allows the shareholders a deduction for an imputed risk-free rate of return. Sørensen’s positive evaluation appears as reasonable for a...

January 1997The anticipatory effects of a corporate tax reform of the tax-cut-cum-base-broadening variety are analysed in a dynamic stochastic adjustmentmodel of firm behavior, focusing on the case where the firm is uncertain both about the timing and the contents of the expected reform. The...

The paper shows that a corporate tax policy which is thought to be neutral may have significant incentive effects. This result is established in a model with tax advantage to debt and expectations about a forthcoming tax reform. Investment spurt effects are established and compared to those of a...