IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ntj/journl/v64y2011i1p105-34.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tax Planning by Mutual Funds: Evidence From Changes in the Capital Gains Tax Rate

Author

Listed:
  • Chen, Feng
  • Kraft, Arthur
  • Weiss, Ira

Abstract

We investigate whether mutual funds engage in tax planning by testing how they respond to changes in the capital gains tax rates. While previous evidence suggests that individual investors time capital gains realizations, mutual fund managers may not tax plan like individuals because fund managers have incentives to consider the tax liability of both current and potential investors. Our analysis spans over 44 years and six major tax changes, allowing us to examine the effects of both tax rate increases and decreases. Overall, we find evidence consistent with tax planning by managers of both open-end and closed-end mutual funds.

Suggested Citation

  • Chen, Feng & Kraft, Arthur & Weiss, Ira, 2011. "Tax Planning by Mutual Funds: Evidence From Changes in the Capital Gains Tax Rate," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 64(1), pages 105-134, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:ntj:journl:v:64:y:2011:i:1:p:105-34
    DOI: 10.17310/ntj.2011.1.05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2011.1.05
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.17310/ntj.2011.1.05
    Download Restriction: Access is restricted to subscribers and members of the National Tax Association.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.17310/ntj.2011.1.05?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gillingham, Robert & Greenlees, John S., 1992. "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Capital Gains Revenue: Another Look at the Evidence," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 45(2), pages 167-77, June.
    2. Plancich, Stephanie, 2003. "Mutual Fund Capital Gain Distributions and the Tax Reform Act of 1997," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 56(1), pages 271-296, March.
    3. Barclay, Michael J. & Pearson, Neil D. & Weisbach, Michael S., 1998. "Open-end mutual funds and capital-gains taxes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 3-43, July.
    4. Burman, Leonard E. & Clausing, Kimberly A. & O'Hare, John F., 1994. "Tax Reform and Realizations of Capital Gains in 1986," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 47(1), pages 1-18, March.
    5. Eichner, Matthew & Sinai, Todd, 2000. "Capital Gains Tax Realizations and Tax Rates: New Evidence From Time Series," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 53(3), pages 663-682, September.
    6. Bergstresser, Daniel & Poterba, James, 2002. "Do after-tax returns affect mutual fund inflows?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 381-414, March.
    7. Burman, Leonard E. & Clausing, Kimberly A. & O'Hare, John F., 1994. "Tax Reform and Realizations of Capital Gains in 1986," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 47(1), pages 1-18, March.
    8. Gillingham, Robert & Greenlees, John S., 1992. "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Capital Gains Revenue: Another Look at the Evidence," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 45(2), pages 167-177, June.
    9. Seyhun, H Nejat & Skinner, Douglas J, 1994. "How Do Taxes Affect Investors' Stock Market Realizations? Evidence from Tax-Return Panel Data," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 67(2), pages 231-262, April.
    10. William Rogers, 1993. "Quantile regression standard errors," Stata Technical Bulletin, StataCorp LP, vol. 2(9).
    11. Himmelberg, Charles P. & Hubbard, R. Glenn & Palia, Darius, 1999. "Understanding the determinants of managerial ownership and the link between ownership and performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 353-384, September.
    12. Gibson, Scott & Safieddine, Assem & Titman, Sheridan, 2000. "Tax-Motivated Trading and Price Pressure: An Analysis of Mutual Fund Holdings," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 369-386, September.
    13. Jennifer L. Blouin & Jana Smith Raedy & Douglas A. Shackelford, 2003. "Capital Gains Taxes and Equity Trading: Empirical Evidence," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(4), pages 611-651, September.
    14. Li Jin, 2006. "Capital Gains Tax Overhang and Price Pressure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1399-1431, June.
    15. Brickley, James A & Manaster, Steven & Schallheim, James, 1991. "The Tax-Timing Option and the Discounts on Closed-End Investment Companies," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(3), pages 287-312, July.
    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. Sanjay Kanti Das, 2012. "Factors Influencing the Mutual Fund Scheme Selection by Retail Investor’s in Assam: An Empirical Analysis," Indian Journal of Commerce and Management Studies, Educational Research Multimedia & Publications,India, vol. 3(3), pages 17-23, September.
    2. Johnson, Woodrow T. & Poterba, James M., 2016. "The effect of taxes on shareholder inflows around mutual fund distribution dates," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 7-19.
    3. Beggs, William & Hill-Kleespie, Austin & Liu, Yanguang, 2022. "Mutual fund tax implications when investment advisors manage tax-exempt separate accounts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).

    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. Poterba, James M., 2002. "Taxation, risk-taking, and household portfolio behavior," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 17, pages 1109-1171, Elsevier.
    2. Niemann, Rainer & Sureth, Caren, 2009. "Investment effects of capital gains taxation under simultaneous investment and abandonment flexibility," arqus Discussion Papers in Quantitative Tax Research 77, arqus - Arbeitskreis Quantitative Steuerlehre.
    3. Burman, Leonard E & Randolph, William C, 1994. "Measuring Permanent Responses to Capital-Gains Tax Changes in Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 794-809, September.
    4. Allison L. Evans, 2008. "Portfolio Manager Ownership and Mutual Fund Performance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 37(3), pages 513-534, September.
    5. Clemens Sialm & Laura Starks, 2012. "Mutual Fund Tax Clienteles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(4), pages 1397-1422, August.
    6. Beggs, William & Hill-Kleespie, Austin & Liu, Yanguang, 2022. "Mutual fund tax implications when investment advisors manage tax-exempt separate accounts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    7. He, Eric & Jacob, Martin & Vashishtha, Rahul & Venkatachalam, Mohan, 2022. "Does differential taxation of short-term relative to long-term capital gains affect long-term investment?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1).
    8. Clemens Sialm & Hanjiang Zhang, 2020. "Tax‐Efficient Asset Management: Evidence from Equity Mutual Funds," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(2), pages 735-777, April.
    9. Chyz, James A. & Li, Oliver Zhen, 2012. "Do Tax Sensitive Investors Liquidate Appreciated Shares After a Capital Gains Tax Rate Reduction?," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(3), pages 595-627, September.
    10. Fong, Kingsley Y.L. & Gallagher, David R. & Lau, Sarah S.W. & Swan, Peter L., 2009. "Do active fund managers care about capital gains tax efficiency?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 257-270, April.
    11. Hanlon, Michelle & Heitzman, Shane, 2010. "A review of tax research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 127-178, December.
    12. Johnson, Woodrow T. & Poterba, James M., 2016. "The effect of taxes on shareholder inflows around mutual fund distribution dates," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 7-19.
    13. Cici, Gjergji & Kempf, Alexander & Sorhage, Christoph, 2012. "Are financial advisors useful? Evidence from tax-motivated mutual fund flows," CFR Working Papers 12-09, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    14. Dimmock, Stephen G. & Feng, Fan & Zhang, Huai, 2023. "Mutual funds' capital gains lock-in and earnings management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 80(C).
    15. Cici, Gjergji & Kempf, Alexander & Sorhage, Christoph, 2013. "Are financial advisors useful? Evidence from tax-motivated mutual fund flows," CFR Working Papers 12-09 [rev.], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    16. Marekwica, Marcel, 2012. "Optimal tax-timing and asset allocation when tax rebates on capital losses are limited," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 2048-2063.
    17. Stefanie Stantcheva, 2020. "Dynamic Taxation," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 801-831, August.
    18. Singal, Vijay & Xu, Zhaojin, 2011. "Selling winners, holding losers: Effect on fund flows and survival of disposition-prone mutual funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(10), pages 2704-2718, October.
    19. Slemrod, Joel, 1998. "Methodological Issues in Measuring and Interpreting Taxable Income Elasticities," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 51(n. 4), pages 773-88, December.
    20. Cici, Gjergji, 2011. "The prevalence of the disposition effect in mutual funds' trades," CFR Working Papers 11-05 [rev.], University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).

    More about this item

    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:ntj:journl:v:64:y:2011:i:1:p:105-34. 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 University of Chicago Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.ntanet.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.