stock price reactions as surrogates for the net cash flow effects of corporate policy decisions abstract this paper adopts a rational market structure to examine the link between the cash flow effects of management policy decisions and the resulting stock price reactions the focus is on testing cross sectional associations between cash flow effects and the underlying characteristics of affected firms we find that it is not possible to infer the sign of association between the stock price reaction and any characteristics of the firm that are observable before management announces its decision our methodological suggestions involve exploiting either a priori assumptions or sample information about the probability distribution of unobservable decision variables underlying the management decision process

the relation between tax rates and pre tax returns direct evidence from the 1981 and 1986 tax rate reductions abstract this study documents one effect of the theory of implicit taxes providing evidence that a change in the tax rate results in a change in pre tax returns yield spreads of pairs of treasury bills maturing in the last week of december and the first week of january are examined year ends not affected by rate changes show a significant positive yield spread between these pairs of bills reflecting an upward sloping yield curve however for year ends coinciding with the tax rate reductions of 1981 and 1986 there is a significant negative yield spread between these pairs of bills

cross jurisdictional income shifting and earnings valuation this research investigates the extent to which u s multinational enterprises mnes engage in tax motivated income shifting between the u s and foreign jurisdictions and whether investors differentially capitalize shifted income based on its true source or its reported source we find evidence that u s mnes facing foreign tax rates that on average exceed the u s statutory tax rate shift taxable income into the united states and that investors recognize firms income shifting patterns when valuing the foreign versus domestic components of reported earnings we examine u s multinational manufacturing companies from 1984 to 1992 to determine the cross sectional relation between firm level foreign profit margins and average foreign tax rates if u s mnes respond to high low foreign tax rates by shifting income into out of the united states then ceteris paribus we expect a negative relation between foreign profit margins and average foreign tax rates in addition

global organizations and taxes an analysis of the dividend interest royalty and management fee payments between u s multinationals foreign affiliates abstract we examine the effects of taxes on cross border dividend interest royalty and management fee payments between foreign affiliates of u s multinationals using 1990 tax return information on transfers totaling 22 8 billion and spanning 71 countries we find dividend royalty and sometimes interest payments between foreign affiliates are negatively correlated with the net tax levied on cross border transfers we find no evidence management fees are structured to mitigate non u s taxes thus taxes affect the location of the supplier and the terms of the contracts for the provision of equity and intangible capital within the worldwide organization

capital gains tax rates and the cost of capital for small business evidence from the ipo market abstract we examine the issue prices of small initial public offerings around the 1993 tax law change that reduced the capital gains tax on qualified small business stock we compare the actual issue price of new stock with a benchmark price that is not affected by the change in capital gains tax we find that after controlling for ipo underpricing the issue prices of qualifying small business stock after the tax rate change are significantly higher than the issue prices before the change a control sample of nonqualifying firms shows no significant difference in issue prices

the determinants of capital gains tax compliance evidence from the rjr nabisco leveraged buyout abstract inability to observe both actual and reported capital gains has impeded studies of capital gains tax compliance this study overcomes such limitations through access to both confidential tax returns and internal shareholder records tests are conducted at the individual taxpayer level for associations between compliance rates for capital gains taxes generated by rjr nabisco shareholders during its leveraged buyout and income marginal tax rates socioeconomic characteristics and measures of the taxpayer s perception of the noncompliance penalty we find noncompliance decreasing in taxable income including rjr nabisco capital gains first dollar marginal tax rates self employment income rental income and other interest paid

state and provincial corporate tax planning income shifting and sales apportionment factor management abstract we empirically document a strategy through which corporations avoid state income taxes examining aggregated american state and canadian provincial data from 1983 1991 we find corporate income tax revenues are concave in corporate tax rates consistent with firms shifting their tax bases to more favourably taxed jurisdictions additional tests exploit unique features of state formula apportionment systems and find manufacturing shipments from states that tax outside their borders throwback states are decreasing in corporate income tax rates on sales

debt financing and tax status tests of the substitution effect and the tax exhaustion hypothesis using firms responses to the economic recovery tax act of 1981 this study tests the joint prediction of the substitution effect and the tax exhaustion hypothesis that an increase in nondebt tax shields leads to a decrease in leverage controls are introduced for the debt securability effect the pecking order theory of financing and the probability of losing tax shields using the relationship between changes in investment tax shields and changes in debt tax shields of firms in response to the economic recovery tax act of 1981 strong empirical support is found for predictions based on the substitution effect and the tax exhaustion hypothesis copyright 1992 by american finance association

capital gains taxation and stock market activity evidence from ipos prior to the tax reform act of 1986 tra 86 long term capital gains were taxed at a lower rate than short term gains presenting investors with an opportunity to increase their after tax return by delaying the sale of appreciated assets until after they qualified for long term status and selling depreciated assets prior to long term qualification using a sample of initial public offerings i find that stocks that appreciated prior to long term qualification exhibit increased volume and decreased returns just after their qualification date while stocks that depreciated prior to long term qualification exhibit these effects just prior to their qualification date it is generally acknowledged that capital gains taxes influence investor behavior slemrod 1982 dyl 1979 chaplinsky and seyhun 1990 and others agree that individuals rationally respond to specific provisions of the tax code in attempting to reduce the tax liability of investment income recently this view has entered the public policy debate concerning the effective date of a proposed capital gains tax cut for example the wall street journal reported that congress has considered making proposed capital gains tax cuts retroactive to avoid possible market disruptions that might come from investors delaying transactions in anticipation of a future effective date wsj february 19 1997 despite the consensus view that capital gains taxes influence investment behavior specific distortions in behavior are difficult to document empirically one reason for the lack of evidence regarding the distortionary effect of capital gains taxes is that it is extremely difficult for researchers to determine the initial cost and the date of purchase of an asset without that information it is impossible for the investigator to know when an investor is trading a longterm or short term asset and whether he is realizing a gain or a loss one class of assets for which it is possible to obtain this information is initial public offerings of common stock ipos by definition ipos are not available for purchase prior to their offer date on the offer date shares are

natural rate estimates for the australian states an svar approach groenewold n and hagger a j 2003 natural rate estimates for the australian states an svar approach reg studies 37 251 263 it has long been recognized that economic policy based on national economic indicators may be inappropriate when evaluated from the point of view of individual regions making up the national economy one indicator which has recently been widely used as a basis for the formulation of macroeconomic policy is the natural rate of unemployment there have been various estimates of the natural rate for australia as a whole in the recent past and these have been used for the assessment of macroeconomic policy there are however no estimates of natural rates for the australian states and so no basis for the evaluation of macroeconomic policy from the perspective of the states this paper fills this gap in the literature and reports estimates of a series for the natural rate for each of the australian states derived from a structural vector auto regressive svar model we compare

the market for tax benefits evidence from leveraged esops abstract this paper examines the competitiveness of the financial markets with respect to taxes a unique set of interest rates from leveraged esops enables precise measures of the effect of a debt subsidy on prices i find that the market shifts most of the tax benefits to borrowers indicative of an elastic supply curve for lenders lenders are compensated for incremental costs such as reductions in tax rates and barriers to entry evidence is also presented that esop lenders are high taxpaying banks suggesting the existence of a tax clientele

financial reporting tax costs and book tax conformity abstract we investigate the role of book tax conformity in firms financial reporting activities using a unique set of publicly traded firms that were forced to switch for tax purposes from the cash method to the accrual method prior to the mandated change little trade off existed between tax planning and financial reporting goals for these firms after the change recognition criteria for tax and financial reporting purposes became more alike increasing the trade off between financial reporting and tax objectives our results suggest that required use of the accrual method for tax purposes causes firms to defer income for financial statement purposes

debt and the marginal tax rate abstract do taxes affect corporate debt policy this paper tests whether the incremental use of debt is positively related to simulated firm specific marginal tax rates that account for net operating losses investment tax credits and the alternative minimum tax the simulated marginal tax rates exhibit substantial variation due to the dynamics of the tax code tax regime shifts business cycle effects and the progressive nature of the statutory tax schedule using annual data from more than 10 000 firms for the years 1980 1992 i provide evidence which indicates that high tax rate firms issue more debt than their low tax rate counterparts

debt covenant violations and managers accounting responses abstract this paper examines accounting changes costs of default and accounting based covenants violated by 130 firms reporting violations in annual reports i find that managers of firms approaching default respond with income increasing accounting changes and that the default costs imposed by lenders and the accounting flexibility available to managers are important determinants of managers accounting responses i also document that private lending agreements are the first violated that net worth and working capital restrictions are the most frequently violated restrictions and that in 52 percent of the cases lenders require concessions from borrowers to resolve default

geographic income shifting by multinational corporations in response to tax rate changes we investigate geographic income shifting by 191 u s multinational corporations in response to worldwide changes in tax rates during 1984 90 between 1984 and 1986 the united kingdom reduced corporate tax rates from a maximum of 45 to 35 and in 1985 france reduced rates from 50 to 45 following these reductions in european rates the united states reduced top corporate tax rates from 46 to 34 between 1986 and 1988 canadian rates increased between 1984 and 1986 and then decreased through 1989 beginning in 1988 numerous countries enacted tax cuts apparently in response to those that occurred earlier in other countries as discussed in section 3 differential changes in tax rates provide incentives for geographic income shifting by multinational firms we identify two subperiods during 1984 90 in which relative tax rate changes

determinants of corporate pension funding strategy abstract several hypotheses concerning pension funding strategy are tested in a cross sectional regression model on a sample of 255 firms results are consistent with the following explanations 1 finance incentives tax benefits and financial slack for high level funding 2 labor incentives for low level funding and 3 financial statement incentives relating to political costs for high level funding and debt contracting costs for low level funding pension funding strategy appears to be complex involving tradeoffs between funding incentives the nature of these interactions and tradeoffs remains to be clarified through future research

managing interacting accounting measures to meet multiple objectives a study of lifo firms abstract using a sample of lifo users we examine the strengths and weaknesses of adopting a simultaneous equations approach to study managers adjustments of interacting accounting measures that meet multiple objectives we focus on the importance of considering differences in the costs and the effectiveness of adjusting accounting measures in addition we examine managers objectives in subsequent years and how adjustments reversals affect those objectives although generally consistent with earlier studies of lifo inventory adjustments our results indicate that modelling interacting accounting measures such as other current accruals and depreciation leads to differing conclusions about the role of taxes

do capital gain tax rate increases affect individual investors trading decisions abstract this paper examines individual investors short and long term trading reactions to the 1986 tax reform act s tra 86 capital gain tax rate increase consistent with a tax induced trading model we document a december 1986 change in year end trading patterns tra 86 also had long term effects on individual investors trading decisions the results suggest that individual investors were less more willing to sell accrued gain loss stocks after tra 86 our ability to document predicted trading behavior is in part due to our trading metric which captures individual investors selling activity better than the volume based metrics used in prior research

taxes and executive stock options abstract in the sixties the qualified stock option was the predominant form of long term incentive compensation contract for major industrial firms in the u s in the early seventies these same firms replaced their tax qualified stock option plans with non qualified sttock options and later modified these plans to include a variety of new contingent compensation arrangements some of which were based on accounting numbers instead of stock prices this paper develops the hypothesis that tax considerations play an important role in explaining the form of compensation contracts the pattern and timing of changes in the compensation plans of the top 100 industrial firms provides evidence consistent with the tax hypothesis

the effect of book income adjustment in the 1986 alternative minimum tax on corporate financial reporting abstract this study examines the effect of the book income adjustment provision in the 1986 alternative minimum tax amt on financial accounting practices a model is developed to identify firms that are more susceptible to the book income adjustment the changes in financial accounting practices for firms affected by the amt are then examined our results indicate that firms that are likely to be affected by the book income adjustment shift timing and permanent differences across years to reduce the impact of the amt

empirical tax research in accounting this paper traces the development of archival microeconomic based empirical income tax research in accounting over the last 15 years the paper details three major areas of research i the coordination of tax and non tax factors ii the effects of taxes on asset prices and iii the taxation of multijurisdictional international and interstate commerce methodological concerns of particular interest to this field also are discussed the paper concludes with a discussion of possible directions for future research r 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classification m41 h25 k34 g32 f23

proxies for the corporate marginal tax rate abstract this paper focuses on how best to measure the corporate marginal tax rate which is an important input into financial analysis of the cost of capital financing policy corporate hedging and corporate reorganizations the results indicate that the simulated tax rate used by shevlin 1990 and graham 1996 although difficult to calculate is the best available proxy for the true marginal tax rate if the simulated rate is unavailable an easy to calculate trichotomous variable or the statutory marginal tax rate which captures the progressivity in the tax schedule are reasonable alternatives better than most commonly used tax variables

tax planning regulatory capital planning and financial reporting strategy for commercial banks we test whether banks investment and financing policies can be explained by tax status we document changes in bank holdings of municipal bonds in response to changes in tax rules relating to deductibility of interest expense we also document an association between banks marginal tax rates and their investment and financing decisions which is consistent with the existence of tax clienteles however banks do not sort themselves perfectly into investment and financing clienteles because of adjustment costs we posit specific types of transaction cost impediments to tax planning and document that banks apparently trade off these costs against tax planning benefits article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

the impact of taxes on the choice of divestiture method abstract this paper estimates the magnitude of tax costs and their impact on the decision to divest assets via a taxable sale rather than a tax free spin off we find that the tax costs are substantial averaging 8 of market value of the divested assets and that cross sectional variation in tax costs has a large impact on managers choice of divestiture method our results are consistent with two explanations first managers are willing to incur avoidable tax costs to gain earnings and cash flow benefits second managers choose taxable sales because the acquisition premia on the sales exceed the avoidable tax costs

taxes and firm size abstract firm size has been used as a proxy for the firm s political costs and hence managers proclivity to choose income reducing accounting procedures this study provides additional evidence on this topic by examining the association between firm size and effective corporate tax rates the latter are one component of a firm s political costs the roughly fifty largest u s exchange listed firms in particular oil and gas companies and manufacturing firms have significantly higher worldwide tax rates than other firms these higher tax rates are observed primarily after the implementation of the u s 1969 tax reform act and after the opec countries raised their tax rates on u s oil producers the findings which are insensitive to alternative sources of data alternative measures of firm size and alternative measures of effective tax rates are consistent with the use in previous studies of firm size as a proxy for the firm s political costs

does tourism promote cross border trade we estimate a simultaneous bivariate qualitative choice model of arizona agribusiness firms propensity to trade and visit as a tourist the cross border state of sonora mexico venture business visits quantified through the tourism equation were found to have the largest impact on a firm s propensity to trade tourist visits have a greater impact on trade when combined with other firm attributes such as age perceived need for geographic diversity foreign language fluency and firm size than if considered alone our results suggest that there is a role for government agencies to play in overcoming imperfect information related to trade opportunities through facilitating exploratory business venture and tourist visits

price and volume effects associated with changes in the s p 500 list new evidence for the existence of price pressures attempts to identify price pressures caused by large transactions may be inconclusive if the transactions convey new information to the market this problem is addressed in an examination of prices and volume surrounding changes in the composition of the s p 500 since these changes cause some investors to adjust their holdings of the affected securities and since it is unlikely that the changes convey information about the future prospects of these securities they provide an excellent opportunity to study price pressures the results are consistent with the price pressure hypothesis immediately after an addition is announced prices increase by more than 3 percent this increase is nearly fully reversed after 2 weeks the efficient market hypothesis emh predicts that security prices reflect all publicly available information therefore one corollary of the emh is that you can sell or buy large blocks of stock at close to the market price as long as you can convince other investors that you have no private information 1 this statement assumes that securities are near perfect substitutes for each other if so the excess demand for a single security will be very elastic and the sale or purchase of a large number of shares will have no impact on price in contrast to the emh scholes 8 kraus and stoll 5 hess and frost 4 and others propose two hypotheses which predict that a large stock sale purchase will cause the price to decrease increase even if no new information is associated with the transaction the imperfect substitutes hypothesis ish also known as the distribution effect hypothesis assumes that securities are not close substitutes for each other and hence that long term demand is less than perfectly elastic under this hypothesis equilibrium prices change when demand curves shift to eliminate excess demand price reversals are not expected because the new price reflects a new equilibrium distribution of security holders the price pressure hypothesis pph assumes that investors who accommodate demand shifts must be compensated for the transaction costs and portfolio risks that they bear when they agree to immediately buy or sell securities which they otherwise would not trade these passive suppliers of liquidity are attracted by immediate price drops rises associated with large sales purchases they are compensated for their liquidity service when prices rise drop to their fullinformation levels the pph like the emh assumes that long run demand is

differential tax benefits and the pension reversion decision abstract we document that tax considerations influence whether and when a firm withdraws excess assets in its defined benefit pension plan through a reversion since a reversion impacts taxable income over many years and alternative methods of withdrawing excess assets exist we argue that the economically relevant tax based decision criterion is its differential tax benefit defined as the difference between the discounted tax savings of reversion versus those of the best alternative withdrawal method we develop a technique for directly estimating this decision criterion and document that differential tax benefits are strongly correlated with the reversion decision and its timing

do demand curves for stocks slope down since september 1976 stocks newly included into the standard and poor s 500 index have earned a significant positive abnormal return at the announcement of the inclusion this return does not disappear for at least ten days after the inclusion the returns are positively related to measures of buying by index funds consistent with the hypothesis that demand curves for stocks slope down the returns are not related to s p s bond ratings which is inconsistent with a plausible version of the hypothesis that inclusion is a certification of the quality of the stock

motives for forming research development financing organizations abstract we study the decision to fund r d through a separate financing organization an rdfo that takes the form of either a limited partnership or a corporation the rdfo offers tax and financial reporting benefits as a form of external funding it also creates moral hazard and adverse selection problems information costs using convertible debt as a comparative form of external funding we find that debt related but not equity related financial reporting benefits affect the decision to form rdfos the evidence is mixed on whether taxes influence the formation decision and the information costs of rdfos restrict their use