The paper analyses efficiency aspects of a dual income tax system with a higher tax on capital gains than dividends. It argues that apart from the distortions to investments claimed in earlier literature, the system puts even more emphasis in creating incentives for entrepreneurs to participate in tax planning. The paper suggests that the owner of a closely held company can avoid all personal taxes on entrepreneurial income by two tax-planning strategies. The first is the avoidance of distributions, which would be taxed at the tax rate on labour income. These funds would instead be invested in the financial markets. The second strategy is a distribute-and-call-back policy, converting retained profits into new equity capital. Interestingly, the outcome is that investment in real capital is not distorted in the long-run equilibrium. Empirical evidence using micro data is also provided.
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Paper provided by Government Institute for Economic Research Finland (VATT) in its series Discussion Papers with number
416.
Length: Date of creation: 05 Apr 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:fer:dpaper:416
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Find related papers by JEL classification: 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
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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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