IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/advacc/v62y2023ics0882611023000147.html

Gold and tax capitalization: A natural experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Smith, Steven
  • Singleton, Ron

Abstract

This research examines whether U.S. income taxes are capitalized into gold coin prices. For years, the American Eagle (Eagle) was the sole gold coin to be IRA eligible. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 expanded eligibility to include all other gold coins beginning on January 1, 1998, except the South African Krugerrand (Rand). In this natural quasi-experiment, we examine whether gold coin prices reacted to the change in IRA-eligibility. Results are largely consistent with the capitalization of implicit taxes in gold coin prices. When legislation allowing IRA eligibility of both the Canadian Maple Leaf (Maple) and the Rand was introduced, the prices of both coins increased relative to the Eagle. When final legislation excluded the Rand from IRA eligibility, but not the Maple, the Rand's price declined while the Maple's did not. The findings contribute to the tax capitalization literature and the effects of interjurisdictional taxation in integrated global markets.

Suggested Citation

  • Smith, Steven & Singleton, Ron, 2023. "Gold and tax capitalization: A natural experiment," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:advacc:v:62:y:2023:i:c:s0882611023000147
    DOI: 10.1016/j.adiac.2023.100655
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0882611023000147
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.adiac.2023.100655?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Engel, E & Erickson, M & Maydew, E, 1999. "Debt-equity hybrid securities," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(2), pages 249-274.
    2. Guenther, David A. & Sansing, Richard, 2006. "Fundamentals of shareholder tax capitalization," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 371-383, December.
    3. Fortune, Peter, 1988. "Municipal Bond Yields: Whose Tax Rates Matter?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 41(2), pages 219-33, June.
    4. Norman Strong & Xinzhong Xu, 2003. "Understanding the Equity Home Bias: Evidence from Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 307-312, May.
    5. Joshua D. Coval & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 1999. "Home Bias at Home: Local Equity Preference in Domestic Portfolios," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2045-2073, December.
    6. Long, John Jr., 1978. "The market valuation of cash dividends : A case to consider," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(2-3), pages 235-264.
    7. Fortune, Peter, 1988. "Municipal Bond Yields: Whose Tax Rates Matter?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 41(2), pages 219-233, June.
    8. Hanlon, Michelle & Hoopes, Jeffrey L., 2014. "What do firms do when dividend tax rates change? An examination of alternative payout responses," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 105-124.
    9. Dan S. Dhaliwal & Merle M. Erickson & Oliver Zhen Li, 2005. "Shareholder Income Taxes and the Relation between Earnings and Returns," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(3), pages 587-616, September.
    10. Edwards, Alexander & Shevlin, Terry, 2011. "The value of a flow-through entity in an integrated corporate tax system," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 473-491, August.
    11. Poterba, James M., 2002. "Taxation, risk-taking, and household portfolio behavior," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 17, pages 1109-1171, Elsevier.
    12. Dan Dhaliwal & Linda Krull & Oliver Zhen Li & William Moser, 2005. "Dividend Taxes and Implied Cost of Equity Capital," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 675-708, December.
    13. Dhaliwal, Dan & Krull, Linda & Li, Oliver Zhen, 2007. "Did the 2003 Tax Act reduce the cost of equity capital?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 121-150, March.
    14. Zhonglan Dai & Edward Maydew & Douglas A. Shackelford & Harold H. Zhang, 2008. "Capital Gains Taxes and Asset Prices: Capitalization or Lock‐in?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 709-742, April.
    15. Lang, Mark H. & Shackelford, Douglas A., 2000. "Capitalization of capital gains taxes: evidence from stock price reactions to the 1997 rate reduction," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(1), pages 69-85, April.
    16. Guenther, David A., 1994. "The relation between tax rates and pre-tax returns direct evidence from the 1981 and 1986 tax rate reductions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 379-393, November.
    17. Dhaliwal, Dan & Zhen Li, Oliver & Trezevant, Robert, 2003. "Is a dividend tax penalty incorporated into the return on a firm's common stock?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 155-178, June.
    18. H. Chu & G. Partington, 2008. "The Market Valuation of Cash Dividends: The Case of the CRA Bonus Issue," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 8(1‐2), pages 1-20, March.
    19. Mihir A Desai & Dhammika Dharmapala, 2011. "Dividend Taxes and International Portfolio Choice," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 266-284, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hanlon, Michelle & Heitzman, Shane, 2010. "A review of tax research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 127-178, December.
    2. Chongyang Chen & Zhonglan Dai & Douglas Shackelford & Harold Zhang, 2011. "Does Financial Constraint Affect Shareholder Taxes and the Cost of Equity Capital?," NBER Working Papers 17169, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Holcomb, Alex & Mason, Paul & Zhang, Harold H., 2020. "Investment income taxes and private equity acquisition activity," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 25-51.
    4. Hail, Luzi & Sikes, Stephanie & Wang, Clare, 2017. "Cross-country evidence on the relation between capital gains taxes, risk, and expected returns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 56-73.
    5. Jean Bédard & Daniel Coulombe & Suzanne M. Paquette, 2007. "Tax Incentives on Equity and Firms' Cost of Capital: Evidence from the Quebec Stock Savings Plan," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 24(3), pages 795-824, September.
    6. Poterba, James M., 2002. "Taxation, risk-taking, and household portfolio behavior," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 17, pages 1109-1171, Elsevier.
    7. Edwards, Alexander & Todtenhaupt, Maximilian, 2020. "Capital gains taxation and funding for start-ups," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 549-571.
    8. Stephanie A. Sikes & Robert E. Verrecchia, 2015. "Dividend tax capitalization and liquidity," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 20(4), pages 1334-1372, December.
    9. David G. Kenchington, 2019. "Does a change in dividend tax rates in the U.S. affect equity prices of non-U.S. stocks?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 593-628, June.
    10. Annika Hegemann & Angela Kunoth & Kristina Rupp & Caren Sureth-Sloane, 2017. "Hold or sell? How capital gains taxation affects holding decisions," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 11(3), pages 571-603, July.
    11. Masanori Orihara, 2023. "Election-Day Market Reactions to Tax Proposals: Evidence from a Close Vote," Working Papers 2219, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.
    12. Jacob, Martin, 2011. "Tax Regimes and Capital Gains Realizations," Working Paper Series, Center for Fiscal Studies 2011:9, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    13. Gary, Robert F. & Moore, Jared A. & Sisneros, Craig A. & Terando, William D., 2016. "The impact of tax rate changes on intercorporate investment," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 55-63.
    14. Cave, Joshua & Lancheros, Sandra, 2024. "Local peer influence on dividend payout decisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    15. Dean Hanlon & Sean Pinder, 2013. "Capital gains tax, supply-driven trading and ownership structure: direct evidence of the lock-in effect," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 53(2), pages 419-439, June.
    16. Dhaliwal, Dan & Krull, Linda & Li, Oliver Zhen, 2007. "Did the 2003 Tax Act reduce the cost of equity capital?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 121-150, March.
    17. Orihara, Masanori, 2024. "Election-day market reactions to tax proposals: Evidence from a close vote," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    18. Chyz, James A. & Li, Oliver Zhen, 2012. "Do Tax Sensitive Investors Liquidate Appreciated Shares After a Capital Gains Tax Rate Reduction?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(3), pages 595-627, September.
    19. Buhlmann, Florian & Doerrenberg, Philipp & Voget, Johannes & Loos, Benjamin, 2020. "How do taxes affect the trading behavior of private investors? Evidence from individual portfolio data," ZEW Discussion Papers 20-047, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    20. Sebastian Eichfelder & Mona Lau, 2015. "Capitalization of capital gains taxes: (In)attention and turn-of-the-year returns," FEMM Working Papers 150019, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:advacc:v:62:y:2023:i:c:s0882611023000147. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/advances-in-accounting/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.