IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/14950.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner, Alexander F.
  • Zeckhauser, Richard
  • Ziegler, Alexandre

Abstract

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) slashed corporations’ median effective tax rates from 31.7% to 20.8%. Nevertheless, 15% of firms experienced an increase. One fifth of firms recorded nonrecurring tax costs or benefits exceeding 3% of total assets. Proxies that existing studies employ to assess the TCJA’s impacts account for just half of actual impacts. Stock prices impounded those proxies during the legislative process. Total impacts were impounded the following year, once firms published their financials. These results indicate that investors find it hard to predict even large and immediate changes to company cash flows due to unfamiliar events.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2020. "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?," CEPR Discussion Papers 14950, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14950
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP14950
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joel Slemrod, 2018. "Is This Tax Reform, or Just Confusion?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 73-96, Fall.
    2. Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2018. "Unequal Rewards to Firms: Stock Market Responses to the Trump Election and the 2017 Corporate Tax Reform," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 590-596, May.
    3. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2017. "Company Stock Reactions to the 2016 Election Shock: Trump, Taxes and Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 11837, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard J. & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2018. "Company stock price reactions to the 2016 election shock: Trump, taxes, and trade," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 428-451.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aria Ardalan & Sebastian G. Kessing & Salmai Qari & Malte Zoubek, 2023. "Does capital bear the burden of local corporate taxes? Evidence from Germany," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 194-23, Universität Siegen, Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht.
    2. Martín Fuentes, Natalia & Di Vito, Luca & Leite, João Matos, 2023. "Understanding the profitability gap between euro area and US global systemically important banks," Occasional Paper Series 327, European Central Bank.
    3. Christine L. Dobridge & Patrick Kennedy & Paul Landefeld & Jacob Mortenson, 2023. "The TCJA and Domestic Corporate Tax Rates," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-078, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).

    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. Kalcheva, Ivalina & Plečnik, James M. & Tran, Hai & Turkiela, Jason, 2020. "(Un)intended consequences? The impact of the 2017 tax cuts and jobs act on shareholder wealth," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Hanke, Michael & Stöckl, Sebastian & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2020. "Political event portfolios," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    3. Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2017. "Paths to Convergence: Stock Price Behavior After Donald Trump's Election," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 17-36, Swiss Finance Institute, revised Feb 2018.
    4. Blanchard, Olivier & Collins, Christopher G. & Jahan-Parvar, Mohammad R. & Pellet, Thomas & Wilson, Beth Anne, 2018. "A year of rising dangerously? The U.S. stock market performance in the aftermath of the presidential election," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 489-502.
    5. Michelle Hanlon & Jeffrey L. Hoopes & Joel Slemrod, 2019. "Tax Reform Made Me Do It!," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 33-80.
    6. Klein, Daniel & Ludwig, Christopher A. & Spengel, Christoph, 2019. "Ring-fencing digital corporations: Investor reaction to the European Commission's digital tax proposals," ZEW Discussion Papers 19-050, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    7. Huang, Yi & Lin, Chen & Liu, Sibo & Tang, Heiwai, 2023. "Trade networks and firm value: Evidence from the U.S.-China trade war," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    8. Stefano Ramelli & Alexander F Wagner & Richard J Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2021. "Investor Rewards to Climate Responsibility: Stock-Price Responses to the Opposite Shocks of the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections [Asset pricing with liquidity risk]," The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 748-787.
    9. Xu, Mingli & Yang, Wei & Huang, Zhixiong, 2021. "Do investor relations matter in the tourism industry? Evidence from public opinions in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 923-933.
    10. Sergei Guriev & Elias Papaioannou, 2022. "The Political Economy of Populism," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 753-832, September.
    11. Müller, Isabella & Nguyen, Huyen & Nguyen, Trang, 2024. "Carbon transition risk and corporate loan securitization," IWH Discussion Papers 22/2022, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), revised 2024.
    12. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Huang, Jiekun, 2020. "All the president's friends: Political access and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 415-431.
    13. Lieberknecht, Philipp & Wieland, Volker, 2019. "On the macroeconomic and fiscal effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act," IMFS Working Paper Series 131, Goethe University Frankfurt, Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS).
    14. Kohei Aono & Keiichi Hori, 2020. "Measuring the Value of Corporate Cash Holdings against Predictable and Unpredictable Negative Shocks," Discussion Paper Series 214-2, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Apr 2021.
    15. Curcio, Domenico & Gianfrancesco, Igor & Vioto, Davide, 2023. "Climate change and financial systemic risk: Evidence from US banks and insurers," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    16. Stefano Carattini & Suphi Sen, 2019. "Carbon Taxes and Stranded Assets: Evidence from Washington State," CESifo Working Paper Series 7785, CESifo.
    17. Monasterolo, Irene & de Angelis, Luca, 2020. "Blind to carbon risk? An analysis of stock market reaction to the Paris Agreement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    18. Raphael Auer & Bruce Muneaki Iwadate & Andreas Schrimpf & Alexander F. Wagner, 2022. "Global production linkages and stock market co-movement," BIS Working Papers 1003, Bank for International Settlements.
    19. Delia DiaconaÅŸu & Seyed Mehdian & Ovidiu Stoica, 2023. "The Global Stock Market Reactions to the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(2), pages 21582440231, June.
    20. Wang, Bo & Zhou, Zhen, 2023. "Informational feedback between voting and speculative trading," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 387-406.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Corporate taxes; Tax cuts and jobs act; Event study; Market efficiency; Tax reform;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • O24 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Trade Policy; Factor Movement; Foreign Exchange Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:14950. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.