Using register-based panel data covering all Finnish firms in 1999-2004, 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 by 10-50 per cent. 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.
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Paper provided by CESifo GmbH in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number
CESifo Working Paper No. 2201.
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.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Allen, Franklin & Michaely, Roni, 2003.
"Payout policy,"
Handbook of the Economics of Finance,
in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 7, pages 337-429
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)