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Employee Stock Options, Corporate Taxes and Debt Policy

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Author Info
John R. Graham
Mark H. Lang
Douglas A. Shackelford
Abstract

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and S&P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, the median marginal tax rate is 31 percent when option deductions are ignored but falls to 5 percent when one accounts for the deductions. For S&P firms, however, option deductions do not affect marginal tax rates to a large degree. In the spirit of DeAngelo and Masulis (1980), option deductions are important nondebt tax shields that can affect corporate policies. We find evidence consistent with option deductions substituting for interest deductions in corporate capital structure decisions. This evidence explains in part why some firms appear to be underlevered.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 9289.

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Date of creation: Oct 2002
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9289

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H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue

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  1. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. " What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-60, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  2. Eugene F. Fama & Kenneth R. French, 2002. "The Equity Premium," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 637-659, 04. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Huddart, Steven & Lang, Mark, 1996. "Employee stock option exercises an empirical analysis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 5-43, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicolás S., 1945-, 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Working papers 1523-84., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management. [Downloadable!]
  5. Myers, Stewart C. & Majluf, Nicholas S., 1984. "Corporate financing and investment decisions when firms have information that investors do not have," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 187-221, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Graham, John R., 1996. "Debt and the marginal tax rate," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 41-73, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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