Courts have articulated a number of legal tests to distinguish corporate transactions that have a legitimate business or economic purpose from those carried out largely, if not solely, for favorable tax treatment. We outline an approach to analyzing the economic substance of corporate...

We illustrate the welfare benefit of tax subsidies to corporate debt financing. Two firms engage in a socially wasteful competition for survival in a declining industry. Firms differ on two dimensions: exogenous productivity and endogenously chosen amount of debt financing, resulting in a two...

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...

This paper develops a theoretical model of multinational firms with an internal capital market. Main reasons for the emergence of such a market are tax avoidance through debt shifting and the existence of institutional weaknesses and financial frictions across host countries. The model serves to...

How do investors value managerial actions designed solely to minimize corporate tax obligations? Using a framework in which managers' tax sheltering decisions are related to their ability to divert value, this paper predicts that the effect of tax avoidance on firm value should vary...

Financial economists have debated the impact of dividend taxes on firm valuation for decades, but existing empirical evidence is mixed. In this study, we avoid certain complications inherent in previous empirical work by exploiting institutional characteristics of Real Estate Investment Trusts...

We investigate how the length of the net operating loss carryback period affects corporate liquidity and marginal tax rates. We estimate that extending the carryback period from two to five years, as recently proposed in President Obama's budget blueprint, would provide $19 ($34) billion of...

This paper analyzes how corporate capital gains taxes affect the capital gain realization decisions of firms. The paper outlines the tax treatment of corporate capital gains, the consequent incentives for firms with gains and losses, the efficiency consequences of these taxes in the context of...

This paper examines the impact of local tax rates and capital market conditions on the level and composition of borrowing by foreign affiliates of American multinational corporations. The evidence indicates that 10 percent higher local tax rates are associated with 2.8 percent higher debt/asset...