The Economic Effects Of Dividend Taxation

We analyze the effects of dividend taxation in a general equilibrium business cycle model with an occasionally-binding investment credit limit. Permanent dividend tax reforms distort capital investment decisions in the binding long-run equilibrium, but are neutral otherwise. Temporary unexpected tax cuts stimulate shortterm real activity in the credit-constrained economy, yet produce contractionary macroeconomic outcomes in the slack regime. The occasionally-binding constraint reconciles the `traditional' and `new' views of dividend taxation, and highlights the importance of measuring the firm's initial borrowing position before enacting tax reforms. Finally, permanently lower dividend taxes dampen financial business cycles, and help to explain macroeconomic asymmetries.

How should capital income be taxed to achieve efficiency and equity? In this detailed study, tax policy analyst Jane Gravelle, brings together comprehensive estimates of effective tax rates on a wide variety of capital by type, industry, legal form, method of financing, and across time. These estimates are combined with a history and survey of issues regarding capital income taxation that are aimed especially at bringing the findings of economic theory and recent empirical research to nonspecialists and policymakers. Many of the topics treated have been the subject of policy debate and legislation over the last ten or fifteen years.Should capital income be taxed at all? And, if capital income is to be taxed, what is the best way to do it? Gravelle devotes two chapters to the first question, and then, in answer to the second question, covers a broad range of topics - corporate taxation, tax neutrality, capital gains taxes, tax treatment of retirement savings, and capital income taxation and international competitiveness. Gravelle also includes a comprehensive history of tax institutions and data on constructing effective tax rates that are not available elsewhere.

Discusses the extent to which dividend taxation imposes a "double tax" on corporate source earnings; the historical impact of tax incentives on the incentives to invest and the value of corporate equity; the effects of limited loss offset provisions on the incentives to invest in risky assets; and the determinants of corporate leverage.

We re-examine the extent to which personal taxes on dividends are capitalized into the equity prices of domestic firms, using data from around the time of the 1997 U.K. dividend tax reform, which removed a significant tax credit for an important group of investors: U.K. pension funds. The tax-adjusted CAPM suggests that the impact should depend on an average of dividend tax rates across all investors, and that U.K. pension funds should reduce their holdings of the previously tax-favored asset: U.K. equities. Given that U.K. pension funds are small relative to the total size of the world capital market, a small open economy-type argument implies that the main effect of the reform would be to reduce U.K. pension funds' ownership of U.K. equities, with little impact on their price. We present evidence which is consistent with these hypotheses. We discuss why previous research (Bell and Jenkinson, 2002) reached a different conclusion.

This monograph is principally the work of the late Martin Norr. He completed a draft of the entire monograph but had not yet revised it when he died in late 1972. At that time, the integration of corporate and shareholder taxation was just beginning to become of widespread interest in the United States. With the increasing interest thereafter, the International Tax Program began to revise his manuscript, making as few changes as possible in the original draft. We had the benefit of criticism and analysis from Professor Richard M. Bird of the University of Toronto, now Director of the Institute of Policy Analysis there. In addition, Mr. Mitsuo Sato of the Ministry of Finance in Japan gave freely of his time in carefully suggesting changes throughout the manuscript. The present version of Chapter 3 owes a great deal to his additions and suggestions. Thanks are also due to Professor Hugh J. Ault of Boston College Law School for the Appendix, containing his description of the German integration system that became effective in 1977, which was first published in Law & Policy in International Business. Mr. Norr's interest in the subject of corporate and shareholder taxation developed while he was writing the International Tax Program's World Tax Series volume Taxation in France, published in 1966. The integration of French taxes on corporations and shareholders took place just after that volume was finished, but had been under discussion in France for some time before then.

Since World War II OECD countries have increasingly used taxation to achieve a variety of economic policy objectives of which stimulating economic activity and employment are usually the most important. The tax system is also used to create a favourable climate for investment, to spur business innovation and to promote long-term sustainable environmental policy. More recently, policies have focused on stimulating child care and encouraging citizens to work for longer. This book discusses the effects of taxation on the economy and its development. It aims to provide the reader with the necessary empirical information, while at the same time presenting an overview of the latest theory. In doing so, it touches on many relevant policy issues.