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The Impact of Personal and Corporate Taxation on Capital Structure Choices

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Author Info
Overesch, Michael
Voeller, Dennis
Abstract

This paper empirically analyses whether both personal and corporate taxation have an impact on companies' capital structure decisions. We investigate the effect of the difference in taxation of debt and equity financing on capital structures. Our empirical results, based on a comprehensive panel of European firm-level data, suggest that a higher tax benefit of debt has the expected significant positive impact on a company's financial leverage. Particularly, we find evidence that the capital structures of smaller companies respond more heavily to changes in the tax benefit of debt. Additional analysis confirms that not only corporate taxes are relevant for corporate financial planning, but variation in capital income tax rates at the shareholder level implicates significant capital structure adjustments as well. Moreover, we find substitutive relationships between non-debt tax shields and the effect of the corporate tax rate on capital structures.

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Paper provided by ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research in its series ZEW Discussion Papers with number 08-020.

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Date of creation: 2008
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Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:7229

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Keywords: Capital Structure Corporate Income Tax Personal Income Tax Firm-Level Data

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Capital and Ownership Structure
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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  14. Fieten, Paul & Kruschwitz, Lutz & Laitenberger, Jorg & Loffler, Andreas & Tham, Joseph & Velez-Pareja, Ignacio & Wonder, Nicholas, 2005. "Comment on "The value of tax shields is NOT equal to the present value of tax shields"," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 184-187, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  23. Mihir A. Desai & C. Fritz Foley & James R. Hines, 2004. "A Multinational Perspective on Capital Structure Choice and Internal Capital Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 59(6), pages 2451-2487, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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