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...

The interaction of various methods of mitigating economic and international double taxation of corporate source income is studied within a standard neoclassical model of firm behavior. The main purpose is to determine to what extent methods effective in mitigating economic double taxation in a...

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 presents a comprehensive overview of existing methods of mitigating double taxation of corporate income within a standard cost of capital model. Two of the most well-known and most utilized methods, the imputation and the split rate systems, do not mitigate double taxation in...

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...

This paper addresses the ongoingdebate on which view of equity, traditional or new, that best describes firm behavior. According to the traditional view, the marginal source of finance is new equity, whereas under to the new view, marginal financing comes from retained earnings. In the...

This note extends the work by Sørensen (2005) and others by demonstrating why the Norwegian Shareholder Income Tax may be neutral between the two sources of equity funds, i.e. new share issues and retained earnings, despite the fact that the retention of earnings to finance new investment does...