Dividend Taxes and Corporate Behavior: Evidence from the 2003 Dividend Tax Cut
利用2003年美国股息税大幅削减，发现非金融、非公用事业上市公司股息支付增加20%，且首次或增加常规股息的公司异常多，机构持股高的公司无变化，支持税收因果效应。
This paper analyzes the effects of dividend taxation on corporate behavior using the large tax cut on individual dividend income enacted in 2003. We document a 20 percent increase in dividend payments by nonfinancial, nonutility publicly traded corporations following the tax cut. An unusually large number of firms initiated or increased regular dividend payments in the year after the reform. As a result, the number of firms paying dividends began to increase in 2003 after a continuous decline for more than two decades. Firms with high levels of nontaxable institutional ownership did not change payout policies, supporting the causality of the tax cut in increasing aggregate dividend payments. The response to the tax cut was strongest in firms with strong principals whose tax incentives changed (those with large taxable institutional owners or independent directors with large share holdings), and in firms where agents had stronger incentives to respond (high share ownership and low options ownership among top executives). Hence, principal-agent issues appear to play an important role in corporate responses to taxation.