This paper tests whether firms altered their dividend and share repurchase policies in response to the 2003 reductions in shareholder tax rates. We predict that firms substituted dividends for repurchases, because the reduction in dividend tax rates exceeded the reduction in the capital gains...

The introduction of the 2006 Norwegian shareholder income tax was announced in advance, and it increased top marginal tax rates on individual dividend income from zero to 28 percent. We document strong timing effects on dividend payout on a large panel of non-listed corporations, with a surge of...

This paper analyzes a tax system where personal share income in excess of the risk-free return on equity (the equity premium) is taxed. The rate of return allowance (RRA) in the Norwegian shareholder income tax system is, to the best of our knowledge, the first attempt of implementing such...

We test whether executive stock ownership affects firm payouts using the 2003 dividend tax cut to identify an exogenous change in the after-tax value of dividends. We find that executives with higher stock ownership were more likely to increase dividends after the tax cut in 2003, whereas no...

Recent studies by Hanlon, Myers, and Shevlin (2001) and Dhaliwal et al. (2001) have stirred considerable interest in the topic of dividend tax capitalization. In these papers HMS and DEMB take a critical look at the theory and findings in Harris and Kemsley (1999). In a prior paper I provide...

This paper provides evidence that dividend and capital gains tax rates importantly influence household portfolio choices. Using data from the Surveys of Consumer Finances around the 2003 dividend tax reductions, I estimate the relationship between taxes and household portfolio dividend yields. I...

We analyze a model of optimal capital structure and liquidity choice based on a dynamic tradeoff theory for financially constrained firms. In addition to the classical tradeoff between the expected tax advantages of debt and bankruptcy costs, we introduce a cost of external financing for the...

We test the impact of taxes and governance systems on dividend payouts across countries. We show that, unlike previous studies, firms in strong investor protection countries pay lower cash dividends than in weak protection countries when the classical tax system is implemented, but they...

For more than 50 years, researchers around the world have been searching for a solution to Blacks famous 'dividend-puzzle'. However, despite tremendous efforts in different fields of economics, the influence of taxation on the distribution policy of firms has remained elusive and is still...

We compile a comprehensive international dividend and capital gains tax data set to study tax explanations of corporate payouts for a panel of 5,767 firms from 25 countries for 1990-2008. We find robust evidence that the tax penalty on dividends versus capital gains is statistically significant...