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The paper studies the effect of uncertainty in firm-speciffic tax avoidance on firm value. We first show in a clean surplus valuation model that expectations about future profitability interact with corporate tax avoidance. Two dimensions of corporate tax avoidance strategies matter for valuation: uncertainty and level of expected future tax rates. We confirm the importance of level and uncertainty of tax avoidance for forecasts of future tax rates using a small sample of analyst tax rate forecasts. Consistent with the model and the implications from analyst forecasts, we derive a tax signal-to-noise ratio based on historical tax information. In our sample of 2,820 firms, we show empirically that this tax signal-to-noise ratio amplifies the effect of pre-tax earnings on firm value. Pre-tax earnings have a stronger effect on firm value for firms with effective and persistent tax avoidance. Firms with volatile effective tax rates receive a discount on their earnings.
Empirical evidence suggests that there is substantial cross-firm variation in the extent of tax avoidance. However, this variation is not well understood. This paper provides a theoretical background for testing, and thus explaining, cross-firm differences in tax avoidance. We develop a formal model with two agents to analyze the incentives that lead firms to engage in tax avoidance. The tax avoidance decision is a function of moral hazard, tax-planning costs, and the potential to increase earnings. If the potential to increase earnings is low, the tax-planning decision is determined by moral-hazard problems. In contrast, when this potential is high, the tax-planning decision is mainly driven by taxplanning costs, such as reputational and political costs. One implication of our model is that moral hazard can (partly) explain why some firms do not engage in tax avoidance: Severe problems of moral hazard make tax avoidance less likely. Our model can be applied to test dierences in tax avoidance between different types of firms.
We study the importance of owner wages and dividends as alternative payout channels in privately held firms. Using data on all Swedish closely held corporations and their owner–managers over the period 2000–2009, we find that dividends comprise one-fourth of total payout to owner–managers. Dividends are used as a flexible payout channel. Wages are the preferred payout channel and are rather sticky. Choice of payout channel and level of payout are affected by dividend and wage taxation. Consistent with the difference in flexibility across payout channels, shareholder taxes have a stronger impact on dividends than on wages.
This paper contrasts the individual capital gains realization behavior between progressive and proportional tax regimes. Using a longitudinal panel of over 288,000 individuals in Sweden, I exploit the 1991 tax reform in Sweden that changed progressive capital gains tax rates ranging from 12% to 80% to a proportional tax rate of 30%. Using the proportional tax system to control for non-tax reasons to realize capital gains, I show that individuals are highly responsive to capital gains tax incentives created by temporary income changes under a progressive capital gains tax. More specifically, I find that individuals with temporary negative (positive) income changes sell (hold) shares that they would hold (sell) in the absence of temporary tax incentives. Further, I show that high-income individuals are more tax sensitive than low-income individuals. This result indicates that low-income individuals facing temporary negative income changes could trade predominantly for non-tax reasons.
This paper studies the cross-base tax elasticity of capital gains realizations to labor income taxes when capital gains are taxed at a separate proportional tax rate. Using a longitudinal panel of over 265,000 individuals in Sweden, this paper shows in a regression kink design that labor income taxes affect capital gains at the extensive and intensive margins. An increase in the marginal labor income tax rate increases the likelihood of realizing capital gains and the amount of realized capital gains. One implication of this result is that the excess burden of labor income taxation is affected by cross-base tax elasticities.
This paper analyzes heterogeneity in capital gains tax elasticities across individuals. Using panel data of over 260,000 individuals, I find that the sensitivity of capital gains to taxes is decreasing over the individual life cycle. Younger individuals respond more strongly to changes in capital gains taxes than older individuals. An increase in age of 18 years decreases the lock-in effect of capital gains taxes by approximately 10%.
This study investigates why countries mandate accruals in the definition of corporate taxable income. Accruals alleviate timing and matching problems in cash flows, which smoothes taxable income and thus better aligns it with underlying economic performance. These accrual properties can be desirable in the tax setting as tax authorities seek more predictable corporate tax revenues. However, they can also make tax revenues procyclical by increasing the correlation between aggregate corporate tax revenues and aggregate economic activity. We argue that accruals shape the distribution of corporate tax revenues, which leads regulators to incorporate accruals into the definition of taxable income to balance the portfolio of government revenues and expenditures. Using a sample of 26 OECD countries, we find support for several theoretically motivated factors explaining the use of accruals in tax codes. We first provide evidence that corporate tax revenues are less volatile in high accrual countries, but high accrual countries collect relatively higher (lower) tax revenues when the corporate sector grows (contracts). Critically, we then show that accruals and smoother tax revenues are favored by countries with higher levels of government spending on public services and uncertain future expenditures, while countries with procyclical other tax collections favor cash rules and lower procyclicality of corporate tax revenues.
This paper studies the effect of corporate taxes on investment. Since firms with a foreign parent have more cross-country profit shifting opportunities than domestically owned firms do, their effective tax rate and, consequently, their tax-induced costs to investment are lower. We therefore expect capital investment responses to a corporate tax cut to be heterogeneous across firms. Using firm-level data on German corporations, we exploit the 2008 tax reform, which substantially cut corporate taxes as an exogenous policy shock and expect domestically owned firms' investments to be more responsive to the reform. We show exactly this in a difference-in-differences setting. We find that the reduction in corporate tax payments led to a one-to-one increase in the real investments of domestic firms. The effect is stronger for domestic firms relying more on internal funds. Correspondingly, labor investment increased more for domestic firms, ensuring a constant mix of input factors. In addition, we show that domestic firms' sales grew faster after the tax cut than the sales of foreign-owned firms. Our results imply that corporate tax changes can increase corporate investment but that domestic firms benefit more than foreign-owned firms from a tax cut through higher investment responses resulting in greater sales growth.
whether the moral evaluation of tax evasion is subject to a self-serving bias. We find that tax morale is egoistically biased: Subjects with the opportunity to evade taxes judge tax evasion as less unethical as opposed to those who cannot evade. The detection probability does not affect this result. Further, we do not find moral spillover effects, for example, on legal activities.
Does legality matter?
(2015)
Previous research argues that law expresses social values and could, therefore, influence individual behavior independently of enforcement and penalization. Using three laboratory experiments on tax avoidance and evasion, we study how legality affects individuals’ decisions. We find that, without any risk of negative financial consequences, the qualification of tax minimization as illegal versus legal reduces tax minimization considerably. Legislators can thus, in principle, affect subjects’ decisions by defining the borderline between legality and illegality. However, once we introduce potential negative financial consequences, legality does not affect tax minimization. Only if we use moral priming to increase subjects’ moral cost do we again find a legality effect on tax minimization. Overall, this demonstrates the limitations of the expressive function of law. Legality appears to be an important determinant of behavior only if we consider activities with no or low risk of negative financial consequences or if subjects are morally primed.