Using register-based panel data covering all Finnish firms from 1999 to 2004, we examine how corporations anticipated the 2005 dividend tax increase via changes in their dividend and investment policies. The Finnish capital and corporate income tax reform of 2005 creates a useful opportunity to measure this behaviour, since it involves exogenous variation in the tax treatment of different types of firms. The estimation results reveal that those firms that anticipated a dividend tax hike increased their dividend payouts in a statistically significant way. This increase was not accompanied by a reduction in investment activities, but rather was associated with increased indebtedness in non-listed firms. The results also suggest that the timing of dividend distributions probably offsets much of the potential for increased dividend tax revenue following the reform. Copyright (c) 2008 The Authors Journal compilation (c) Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2008.
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Article provided by Institute for Fiscal Studies in its journal Fiscal Studies.
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Roger Gordon & Martin Dietz, 2006.
"Dividends and Taxes,"
NBER Working Papers
12292, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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