The Effects of Anticipated Inflation on Housing Market Equilibrium

An increase in the anticipated rate of inflation causes distortions in the housing market due to a nonindexed tax system. Since nominal rather than real interest payments are tax deductible, an increase in inflation decreases the aftertax cost of capital for homeowners, which in turn increases the demand for housing and increases its real price. This tax gain is shown to be larger for rental housing than for owner-occupied housing. In a competitive market, this implies that although the real price of housing increases with a rise in anticipated inflation, real rental rates fall.     

Market Valuation of Tax-Timing Options: Evidence from Capital Gains Distributions

We examine a distribution that is taxed as a capital gain rather than as a dividend. Since the distribution induces a realized capital gain while the price change is an unrealized gain, ex‐day return behavior provides evidence of the value of tax‐timing capital gains. We show that investors are compensated 7¢ in unrealized gains for each dollar of realized capital gains, that is, $1 of realized capital gains is equivalent to 93¢ of unrealized gains. An investor with a tax rate on realized gains of 15% has an effective tax rate on unrealized capital gains of 8.6%.     

Optimal taxation with home production

Optimal taxes for Europe and the U.S. are derived in a realistically calibrated model in which agents buy consumption goods and services and use home capital and labor to produce household services. The optimal tax rate on services is substantially lower than the tax rate on goods. Specifically, the planner cannot tax home production directly and instead lowers the tax rate on market services to increase the relative price of home production. The optimal tax rate on the return to home capital is strictly positive and the welfare gains from switching to optimal taxes are large.     

Capital gains tax,supply‐driven trading and ownership structure: direct evidence of the lock‐in effect

This study investigates the effect of differential capital gains tax rates on investor trading and share prices in a unique market setting that facilitates the resolution of conflicting prior evidence of holding period tax incentives. In particular, we examine whether the concessionary tax treatment of long‐term capital gains increases the supply of shares that qualify for long‐term status, thereby causing downward price pressure. We find evidence of abnormal seller‐initiated trading following the 12‐month anniversary of listing for IPO firms that appreciate in price (‘winners’) and report no such evidence for firms that decline in price (‘losers’). Consistent with the tax concessions being greater for individual than institutional investors, we report that abnormal seller‐initiated trading is mitigated by higher levels of ownership by institutional investors. We also report limited evidence, for winners, of declining share prices upon qualifying for long‐term tax status.     

Do Price Discreteness and Transactions Costs Affect Stock Returns? Comparing Ex‐Dividend Pricing before and after Decimalization

By the end of January 2001, all NYSE stocks had converted their price quotations from 1/8s and 1/16s to decimals. This study examines the effect of this change in price quotations on ex‐dividend day activity. We find that abnormal ex‐dividend day returns increase in the 1/16 and decimal pricing eras, relative to the 1/8 era, which is inconsistent with microstructure explanations of ex‐day price movements. We also find that abnormal returns increase in conjunction with a May 1997 reduction in the capital gains tax rate, as they should if relative taxation of dividends and capital gains affects ex‐day pricing.     

An Empirical Examination of Tax Factors and Mutual Funds' Stock Sales Decisions

We examine whether taxes affect stock sales by mutual funds. For certain funds, the expected amount of a given stock sold in a given quarter is 62% greater when liquidation would trigger a capital loss equal to 1% of the value of the portfolio than when a like-size gain would be triggered, a greater effect than is associated with either contemporaneous excess stock returns of 50% or unexpected EPS equal to 50% of the stock price. For growth funds, responses to tax factors are consistent from year to year, and dispositions vary with the year-to-date realized gain.     

Prospects for Co-ordination of Corporate Taxation and the Taxation of Interest Income in the EU

This paper evaluates the recent proposals for a co-ordinated capital tax policy in the European Union, focusing on an EU-wide minimum withholding tax on interest income and alternative ways to increase the effective tax rate on corporate profits. The analysis draws on current theoretical and empirical research and views the recent capital tax reforms undertaken by individual member countries as rational adjustments to changing conditions in capital markets. Special emphasis is placed on the constraints for EU tax policy imposed by the possibility of shifting capital income to third countries. The paper concludes that some aggregate efficiency gains can be expected from the EU co-ordination proposals, but additional tax collections will be limited largely to the group of small savers while highly mobile large-scale investors are likely to avoid the EU tax.     

Tax reform, the informal economy, and bank financing of capital formation

This paper develops a model that relates businesses’ entry into the underground economy to tax rates and the need to access the banking system. The model uses a dynamic approach in which both firms and banks optimize and in which the benefits to a firm of accessing the banking system are endogenous. A firm compares the return to capital with the marginal tax rate on capital income and uses the difference to determine how much of the tax to pay. At the same time, banks use a firm’s capital tax payments, combined with the capital tax rate to obtain an estimate of the firm’s minimum capital value. If the firm pays at least some taxes then it will have access to the banking system, which will allow it to finance investment. If the firm pays no taxes, then it cannot access the banks and cannot invest. We compare the equilibria resulting from tax compliance and tax evasion. We calibrate the model to a highly stylized version of the Russian economy, and analyze the effect of potential tax changes on the underground economy. We compute a dynamic equilibrium for our model, and note that it tracks the path of certain macroeconomic variables of the Russian economy (GDP, budget and trade balances, price level and interest rate) with some accuracy for the years 2001–2008. We are unable to track the underground economy, as this data is unobservable. We then carry out a series of counterfactual simulations, first asking if non-capital intensive firms have an incentive to evade taxes under existing value added tax rates. We find that they do, and that the incentive would have been greatly reduced if the value added tax rate had been selectively reduced for the non-capital intensive sectors. We then ask what the effect would be if the corporate tax rate were raised on capital intensive sectors. The simulations indicate that the capital intensive sectors would not increase their entry into the underground economy.     

On capital injections and dividends with tax in a diffusion approximation

We consider a diffusion approximation to a risk process with dividends and capital injections. Tax has to be paid on dividends, but capital injections lead to an exemption from tax. That is, tax is only paid for the aggregate excess of dividends over the capital injections. The value of a strategy is the expected value of the discounted dividend payments after tax minus the discounted capital injections. We solve the problem and show that the optimal dividend strategy is a barrier strategy.     

Tax competition, excludable public goods, and user charges

This paper provides an explanation for the increasing reliance on revenue from user charges on excludable public goods. We develop a model with many identical countries. The government of each country imposes a source-based tax on capital and supplies an excludable public good to heterogeneous households. Without tax competition, the price on the public good is zero. Tax competition induces each country to choose a positive price. The reliance on user charges turns out to be increasing in the intensity of tax competition measured by the number of countries. A coordinated decrease in user charges is shown to raise welfare in all countries.      

对个人住房开征物业税的几个判断及效应预测

对个人住房开征物业税是关乎国计民生的大事。本文认为,开征物业税之前需要进一步理顺中央与地方的财政关系;开征后的物业税收入要用于满足地方公共财政支出的需要;物业税开征后的征管质量取决于对个人住房信息的掌握和政府各部门间的横向合作。物业税开征与地区房地产价格弱相关,与全国房地产价格无关;与股市题材炒作相关,与资本市场发育无关;与当地居民收入和福利相关,与辖区外居民效用无关。     

On the Interaction of Real and Financial Decisions of the Firm Under Uncertainty

This study analyzes the interaction between the optimal level of investment and debt financing. For this purpose, a model is structured in which a firm, facing an uncertain price, has to decide on its optimal level of investment and debt. The amount of investment sets a limit on output whose optimal level is determined after price is realized. The debt involved is risky (there exists a possibility of bankruptcy). The analysis proves that investment and its optimal financing have to be simultaneously determined and that a negative relationship exists between operating and financial leverage. We also demonstrate that as the tax rate increases, optimal capacity decreases and optimal leverage increases. An analysis of the impact of changes in the expected price shows that under some conditions, an increase in expected price would lead to an increase in optimal investment (firm size) and a decrease in optimal debt.     

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BEFORE- AND AFTER-TAX YIELDS ON FINANCIAL ASSETS

In this research, the traditional approximation that after-tax yields equal before-tax yields times one minus the tax rate is shown in general to be incorrect. The traditional relationship holds only for one-year assets and perpetuities when a single tax rate applies to both ordinary income and capital gains. For all other multiperiod assets, the correct relationship is much more complex and is a function of the statutory tax rates on ordinary income and capital gains, the holding period, the dividend growth rate for common stocks, and any premium or discount on bonds. The direction of bond price changes is related inversely to the direction of the tax rate changes, but the direction of common stock price changes is related ambiguously to the direction of tax rate changes.     

The Effect of Cum- to Ex-Dividend Changes on UK Share Prices

The price behaviour of a share at the time of its going ex-dividend presents an intriguing observable. Previous authors have argued that the statistic is indicative of ‘shareholder rationality’. This is to say, if shareholders ‘rationally' capitalise their dividends received on an after personal tax basis, the change in the price of a share on its going ex-dividend should be a well-defined function of shareholders’ assessment of their own personal tax brackets. In turn this would substantiate the ‘clientele effect’ hypothesis whereby shareholders with high income/low capital gain tax brackets hold shares with high growth companies, and shareholders with low income/high capital gain tax brackets hold shares with low-growth companies. Our statistical analysis provides evidence of the clientele effect in the UK stock market.     

Capital Gains Tax Overhang and Price Pressure

I study whether the capital gains tax is an impediment to selling by some investors and if so, to what degree associated delayed selling affects stock prices. I find that selling decisions by institutions serving tax‐sensitive clients are sensitive to cumulative capital gains, a pattern not observed for institutions with predominantly tax‐exempt clients. Moreover, tax‐related underselling impacts stock prices during large earnings surprises for stocks held primarily by tax‐sensitive investors. The corresponding price reactions are less negative (more positive) with higher cumulative capital gains. This price pressure pattern is more severe when arbitrage is more costly.     

Lost in translation: Delayed ex-dividend price adjustments of Hong Kong ADRs

Previous research documents that Hong Kong stocks have a full ex-dividend price adjustment consistent with dividends and capital gains being tax free. We examine ex-dividend price behavior of Hong Kong ADRs to assess the impact of differing tax environments in US and Hong Kong. These ADRs typically go ex-dividend before their underlying stock. They experience significant abnormal returns of 1.16% on their ex-day; the average ex-day price drop is only 30% of the dividend. However, ADR prices drop when the underlying stock goes ex-dividend subsequently. The cumulative ADR price drop is equal to the dividend. Thus, the ADR ex-dividend adjustment resembles that of the underlying stock, consistent with home country tax laws governing ADR price behavior. Neither liquidity nor transaction costs can explain the anomalous delayed ex-dividend adjustment of ADRs.     

Have the tax benefits of debt been overestimated?

We re-examine the claim that many corporations are underleveraged in that they fail to take full advantage of debt tax shields. We show prior results suggesting underleverage stems from biased estimates of tax benefits from interest deductions. We develop improved estimates of marginal tax rates using a non-parametric procedure that produces more accurate estimates of the distribution of future taxable income. We show that additional debt would provide firms with much smaller tax benefits than previously thought, and when expected distress costs and difficult-to-measure non-debt tax shields are also considered, it appears plausible that most firms have tax-efficient capital structures.     

Foreign portfolio equity holdings and capital gains taxation

Using panel data from 23 developed countries over the 2001–2011 period and employing the Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond dynamic panel estimation technique, this paper shows that the source country capital gains tax has a negative and statistically significant impact on foreign portfolio equity holdings. On average, a 1 percentage point increase in capital gains tax rate leads to 0.018% decrease in foreign equity holdings. The negative relationship between the capital gains tax and foreign equity holdings is found to be robust to alternative measures of the source country capital gains tax, inclusion of the dividend imputation tax rate, foreign dividend tax withheld rate, dividend tax credit and other control variables (the source and host country financial wealth, trade, exchange rate volatility, foreign listing and institutional quality). We find that a 1% increase in financial wealth of the source (host) country leads to, on average, a 0.428% (0.427%) increase in foreign equity holdings. An improvement in institutional quality has a positive effect on foreign equity holdings but an increase in the exchange rate volatility has the opposite effect.     

税负效应与除息日股票价格行为研究——来自A股市场的实证证据

本文基于我国A股市场相关数据对除息日股价行为的税负效应进行全面检验,实证结果表明股息和资本利得税率对除息日股价波动行为具有显著影响,税负效应理论存在于A股市场,但除息日股价波动行为不能完全由税负效应进行解释,另外实证研究还发现我国A股市场不存在税收诱导客户效应。     

TAXATION,BANKRUPTCY COSTS,AND CAPITAL STRUCTURE DECISIONS WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF A MULTI-PERIOD CAPITAL ASSET PRICING MODEL

In this paper, a multi-period version of the CAPM is used to establish conditions for an optimal capital structure in the presence of a tax on corporate earnings, and bankruptcy costs. It is shown that the optimal point is reached when the marginal tax advantage arising from an increase in debt, is equal to the marginal increase in expected bankruptcy penalties.