IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/coacre/v13y1996i2p487-504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Determinants of Corporate Leverage: A Time†Series Analysis Using U.S. Tax Return Data

Author

Listed:
  • MICHAEL S. H. SHIH

Abstract

. The study examines how the risk of exhausting corporate tax liabilities before deducting interest expense affects corporate leverage. It differs from prior studies in three ways: (1) it uses data compiled by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from corporate tax returns rather than accounting data; (2) it measures risk of tax exhaustion more accurately; and (3) it adopts a first†difference time†series approach, so that firms act as their own control between adjacent years. These methodological innovations reduce biases caused by measurement error and omitted variables that were present in prior research. The results suggest that, all else being equal, high risk of tax exhaustion reduces firms' use of leverage. As well, the study provides the first evidence that personal taxes significantly affect corporate leverage. The effects on leverage decisions of other variables are also tested and the results are consistent with predictions from prior theoretical work.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael S. H. Shih, 1996. "Determinants of Corporate Leverage: A Time†Series Analysis Using U.S. Tax Return Data," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(2), pages 487-504, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:13:y:1996:i:2:p:487-504
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1911-3846.1996.tb00512.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1996.tb00512.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1911-3846.1996.tb00512.x?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. MacKie-Mason, Jeffrey K, 1990. "Do Taxes Affect Corporate Financing Decisions?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(5), pages 1471-1493, December.
    2. Stewart C. Myers & Nicholas S. Majluf, 1984. "Corporate Financing and Investment Decisions When Firms Have InformationThat Investors Do Not Have," NBER Working Papers 1396, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. 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.
    4. Modigliani, Franco, 1982. "Debt, Dividend Policy, Taxes, Inflation and Market Valuation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(2), pages 255-273, May.
    5. Bradley, Michael & Jarrell, Gregg A & Kim, E Han, 1984. "On the Existence of an Optimal Capital Structure: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 857-878, July.
    6. Jaffe, Jeffrey F, 1978. "A Note on Taxation and Investment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 33(5), pages 1439-1445, December.
    7. Lucas, Deborah J & McDonald, Robert L, 1990. "Equity Issues and Stock Price Dynamics," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 1019-1043, September.
    8. Hochman, Shalom & Palmon, Oded, 1985. "The Impact of Inflation on the Aggregate Debt-Asset Ratio," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1115-1125, September.
    9. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    10. Trezevant, Robert, 1992. "Debt Financing and Tax Status: Tests of the Substitution Effect and the Tax Exhaustion Hypothesis Using Firms' Responses to the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1557-1568, September.
    11. Granger, C. W. J. & Newbold, P., 1974. "Spurious regressions in econometrics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 111-120, July.
    12. Kale, Jayant R & Noe, Thomas H & Ramirez, Gabriel G, 1991. "The Effect of Business Risk on Corporate Capital Structure: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1693-1715, December.
    13. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    14. Titman, Sheridan & Wessels, Roberto, 1988. " The Determinants of Capital Structure Choice," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(1), pages 1-19, March.
    15. DeAngelo, Harry & Masulis, Ronald W., 1980. "Optimal capital structure under corporate and personal taxation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 3-29, March.
    16. Fischer, Edwin O & Heinkel, Robert & Zechner, Josef, 1989. " Dynamic Capital Structure Choice: Theory and Tests," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(1), pages 19-40, March.
    17. Myers, Stewart C., 1984. "Capital structure puzzle," Working papers 1548-84., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    18. Breusch, T S & Pagan, A R, 1979. "A Simple Test for Heteroscedasticity and Random Coefficient Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1287-1294, September.
    19. Marsh, Paul, 1982. "The Choice between Equity and Debt: An Empirical Study," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 37(1), pages 121-144, March.
    20. Miller, Merton H, 1977. "Debt and Taxes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 32(2), pages 261-275, May.
    21. Myers, Stewart C, 1984. "The Capital Structure Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 575-592, July.
    22. Durlauf, Steven N & Phillips, Peter C B, 1988. "Trends versus Random Walks in Time Series Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1333-1354, November.
    23. Talmor, Eli & Haugen, Robert & Barnea, Amir, 1985. "The Value of the Tax Subsidy on Risky Debt," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(2), pages 191-202, April.
    24. Dammon, Robert M & Senbet, Lemma W, 1988. " The Effect of Taxes and Depreciation on Corporate Investment and Financial Leverage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(2), pages 357-373, June.
    25. Stewart C. Myers, 1984. "Capital Structure Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 1393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Engle, Robert F, 1982. "Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity with Estimates of the Variance of United Kingdom Inflation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 987-1007, July.
    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. Michael S. H. Shih, 1996. "Les déterminants du niveau d'endettement de l'entreprise: une analyse de séries chronologiques constituées à partir des données contenues dans les déclarations de revenus produites aux États†U," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 13(2), pages 505-526, September.
    2. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2012. "Market timing, taxes and capital structure: evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints t3mvs, Center for Open Science.
    3. Sanjiva Prasad & Christopher J. Green & Victor Murinde, 2005. "Company Financial Structure: A Survey and Implications for Developing Economies," Chapters, in: Christopher J. Green & Colin Kirkpatrick & Victor Murinde (ed.), Finance and Development, chapter 12, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Sanjiva Prasad & Christopher J. Green & Victor Murinde, 2001. "Company Financing, Captial Structure, and Ownership: A Survey, and Implications for Developing Economies," SUERF Studies, SUERF - The European Money and Finance Forum, number 12 edited by Morten Balling, May.
    5. Glenn Boyle & Kelly Eckhold, 1997. "Capital structure choice and financial market liberalization: evidence from New Zealand," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(4), pages 427-437.
    6. Jeffrey K. MacKie-Mason, 1990. "Do Firms Care Who Provides Their Financing?," NBER Chapters, in: Asymmetric Information, Corporate Finance, and Investment, pages 63-104, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Alfons J. Weichenrieder & Tina Klautke & Alfons Weichenrieder, 2008. "Taxes and the Efficiency Costs of Capital Distortions," CESifo Working Paper Series 2431, CESifo.
    8. Rana El Bahsh & Ali Alattar & Aziz N. Yusuf, 2018. "Firm, Industry and Country Level Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from Jordan," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(2), pages 175-190.
    9. Antonczyk, Ron Christian & Salzmann, Astrid Juliane, 2014. "Overconfidence and optimism: The effect of national culture on capital structure," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 132-151.
    10. Feld, Lars P. & Heckemeyer, Jost H. & Overesch, Michael, 2013. "Capital structure choice and company taxation: A meta-study," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 2850-2866.
    11. repec:dgr:rugsom:01e54 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Showalter, Dean, 1999. "Strategic debt: evidence in manufacturing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 319-333, April.
    13. Philippe GAUD & Martin HOESLI & André BENDER, 2004. "Further Evidence on Debt-Equity Choice," FAME Research Paper Series rp114, International Center for Financial Asset Management and Engineering.
    14. Chen, Linda H. & Jiang, George J., 2001. "The financing behavior of Dutch firms," Research Report 01E54, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    15. Paul Gatward & Ian G. Sharpe, 1996. "Capital Structure Dynamics with Interrelated Adjustment: Australian Evidence," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 21(2), pages 89-112, December.
    16. Todd Mitton, 2008. "Why Have Debt Ratios Increased for Firms in Emerging Markets?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 14(1), pages 127-151, January.
    17. M. Ameziane Lasfer, 1995. "Agency costs, taxes and debt: The UK evidence," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 1(3), pages 265-285, November.
    18. José López-Gracia & Francisco Sogorb-Mira, 2008. "Testing trade-off and pecking order theories financing SMEs," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 117-136, August.
    19. Lewellen, Katharina, 2004. "Financing Decisions When Managers Are Risk Averse," Working papers 4438-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    20. Evaldo Guimarães Barbosa & Cristiana De Castro Moraes, 2003. "Determinants Of The Firm’S Capital Structure - The Case Of The Very Small Enterprises," Finance 0302001, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Oct 2003.
    21. Shyam-Sunder, Lakshmi & C. Myers, Stewart, 1999. "Testing static tradeoff against pecking order models of capital structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 219-244, February.

    More about this item

    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:wly:coacre:v:13:y:1996:i:2:p:487-504. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1911-3846 .

    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.