Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Deslandes, Manon

Titel

L'incidence du taux d'imposition des dividendes sur les décisions financieres des sociétés

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Governments sometimes use tax policies to influence taxpayer behavior. Recently, the US and Canadian governments cut dividend tax rates for individuals. The US government suggests that taxing dividends reduces corporate investment, encourages high debt-to-equity ratios, and discourages firms from paying out dividends. Therefore, lower dividend taxes should change these behaviors. However, the influence of dividend taxes on corporate decision making is a controversial issue. Using Canada's 2006 dividend tax cut, we examine the effect of lower dividend taxes on several financial decisions made by firms concerning dividend payouts, share repurchases and investments. Our results suggest that the dividend tax cut encouraged Canadian firms to increase their distributions ratio via dividend payouts and encouraged dividend-paying firms to invest more. These responses to the tax cut were stronger in firms where the level of stock holding by investors who benefit from the dividend tax cut was higher.However, our results also suggest that the dividend tax cut affected family and non-family firms differently: family firms increased their dividend payouts but not their investments, whereas non-family firms who paid out dividends increased their investments. This underscores the need to consider the effect on more than one financial decision, and to take into account the firm's property structure to better understand the effects of dividend taxes.