This paper presents new evidence on how corporate payout policy responds to the differential between the tax burden on dividend income and that on accruing capital gains. It describes the construction of weighted average marginal tax rate series for the period since 1929, and it suggests that...

We examine the hypothesis that dividend taxes are capitalized into share prices by focusing on investors' implicit valuations of retained earnings versus paid-in equity. Retained earnings are distributable as taxable dividends, whereas paid-in equity is distributable as a tax-free return of...

This paper tests several competing hypotheses about the economic effects of dividend taxation. It employs British data on security returns, dividend payout rates, and corporate investment, because unlike the United States, Britain has experienced several major dividend tax reforms in the last...

This paper uses British data to examine the effects of dividend taxes on investors' relative valuation of dividends and capital gains. British data offer great potential to illuminate the dividends and taxes question, since there have been two radical changes and several minor reforms in British...

Taxes on corporate distributions have traditionally been regarded as a "double tax" on corporate income. This view implies that while the total effective tax rate on corporate source income affects real economic decisions, the distribution of this tax burden between the shareholders and the...

This paper examines the empirical relation between stock returns and dividend yields. Several equilibrium pricing models incorporating differential taxation of dividends and capital gains are nested as systems of time series regressions. Estimates of these models and tests of parameter...

Dividends seem to be more heavily taxed than capital gains. Why then do corporations pay dividends rather than repurchasing shares or retaining earnings? Either corporations are not acting in the interests of shareholders, or else shareholders desire dividends sufficiently for nontax reasons to...

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model to study the impact of the 2003 dividend and capital gains tax cuts. In the model, firms are heterogeneous in productivity and make investment and financing decisions subject to capital adjustment costs, equity issuance costs, and collateral...

This paper jointly evaluates firm-level changes in investor composition and shareholder distributions following a 2003 reduction in the dividend and capital gains tax rates for individuals. We find that directors and officers, but not other individual investors, rebalanced their portfolios to...

Anticipated dividend tax changes, on the other hand, allow firms to engage in inter-temporal tax arbitrage so as to reduce investors' tax burden. This can significantly distort aggregate investment. Anticipated tax cuts (increases) delay (accelerate) firms' dividend payments, which leads them to...