Taxes and Company Dividends: A Microeconometric Investigation Exploiting Cross-Section Variation in Taxes.

The authors use panel data for 1,218 U.K. industrial and commercial companies between 1970 and 1990 to investigate whether dividends are affected by taxes. Cross-section variation in the tax cost of paying dividends results from surplus advance corporation tax affecting some firms during this period. Observations on firms moving into and out of surplus advanced corporation tax allow them to identify the effect of taxes while controlling for unobserved firm-specific influences. The authors' results suggest that the tax cost has a statistically significant and quantitatively important influence on dividends. Copyright 1996 by Royal Economic Society.