[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/arqudp/115.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The influence of tax regimes on distribution police of corporations: Evidence from German tax reforms

Author

Listed:
  • Schanz, Deborah
  • Theßeling, Holger
Abstract
For more than 50 years, researchers around the world have been searching for a solution to Blacks famous 'dividend-puzzle'. However, despite tremendous efforts in different fields of economics, the influence of taxation on the distribution policy of firms has remained elusive and is still subject to extensive debate amongst scholars, professionals and politicians alike. In this paper, we try to shed some light on the discussion by presenting new empirical evidence from German tax reforms. Using a sample containing all firms listed at the Frankfurt stock exchange in the years from 1993 to 2009, we find robust evidence, that the switch from a split-rate tax system with full imputation to a shareholder relief system in 2002 and the change to a flat tax system in 2009 led to significant changes in the payout behavior of German firms. In line with the 'traditional view' of dividend taxation, German decision-makers cut back their dividend payments in response to the reduced advantageousness of dividends in comparison to capital gains after the reform.

Suggested Citation

  • Schanz, Deborah & Theßeling, Holger, 2011. "The influence of tax regimes on distribution police of corporations: Evidence from German tax reforms," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 115, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:arqudp:115
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/45019/1/654847061.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Dividends; Taxation; Payout Policy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • G35 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Payout Policy
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:arqudp:115. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.arqus.info/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.