IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/coacre/v33y2016i1p44-77.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trapped Cash and the Profitability of Foreign Acquisitions

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Edwards
  • Todd Kravet
  • Ryan Wilson

Abstract

Current U.S. reporting and tax laws create an incentive for some U.S. firms to avoid the repatriation of foreign earnings, as the U.S. government charges additional corporate taxes on these transfers. Prior research suggests that the combined effect of these incentives leads some U.S. multinational corporations to hold a significant amount of cash overseas. In this study, we investigate the effect of cash trapped overseas on U.S. multinational corporations' foreign acquisitions. Consistent with expectations, we observe firms with high levels of trapped cash make less profitable acquisitions of foreign target firms using cash consideration (lower announcement window returns, lower buy and hold returns, decreased ROA). The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA) reduced this effect by allowing firms to repatriate foreign earnings held as cash abroad at a much lower tax cost. Our study has implications for current proposals to change the tax laws related to foreign earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Edwards & Todd Kravet & Ryan Wilson, 2016. "Trapped Cash and the Profitability of Foreign Acquisitions," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(1), pages 44-77, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:33:y:2016:i:1:p:44-77
    DOI: 10.1111/1911-3846.12140
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12140
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1911-3846.12140?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lisa De Simone & Lillian F. Mills & Bridget Stomberg, 2019. "Using IRS data to identify income shifting to foreign affiliates," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 694-730, June.
    2. Todtenhaupt, Maximilian & Voget, Johannes & Feld, Lars P. & Ruf, Martin & Schreiber, Ulrich, 2020. "Taxing away M&A: Capital gains taxation and acquisition activity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    3. Jeremiah Harris & William O'Brien, 2022. "Do U.S. firms disguise acquisitions to avoid taxes?," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 95-127, February.
    4. Bradley S. Blaylock & Jimmy F. Downes & Mollie E. Mathis & Scott D. White, 2022. "Do bondholders incorporate expected repatriation taxes into their pricing of debt?," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 27(4), pages 1457-1492, December.
    5. Frey, Lisa & Engelhard, Lisa, 2017. "Review on tax research in accounting: Is the information given by U.S. GAAP income taxes also provided by IFRS?," Passauer Diskussionspapiere, Betriebswirtschaftliche Reihe B-28-17, University of Passau, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    6. De Simone, Lisa & Klassen, Kenneth J. & Seidman, Jeri K., 2022. "The effect of income-shifting aggressiveness on corporate investment," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1).
    7. Harris, Jeremiah & O'Brien, William, 2018. "U.S. worldwide taxation and domestic mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 419-438.
    8. Babkin, Anton & Glover, Brent & Levine, Oliver, 2017. "Are corporate inversions good for shareholders?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 227-251.
    9. Beyer, Brooke & Downes, Jimmy & Rapley, Eric T., 2017. "Internal capital market inefficiencies, shareholder payout, and abnormal leverage," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 39-57.
    10. Axel Prettl & Dominik Hagen, 2023. "Multinational ownership patterns and anti-tax avoidance legislation," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 30(3), pages 565-634, June.
    11. Chahine, Salim & Dbouk, Wassim & El-Helaly, Moataz, 2021. "M&As and political uncertainty: Evidence from the 2016 US presidential election," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    12. Richardson, Grant & Taylor, Grantley & Obaydin, Ivan, 2020. "Does the use of tax haven subsidiaries by U.S. multinational corporations affect the cost of bank loans?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    13. Dong, Qi Flora & Cao, Yiting & Zhao, Xin & Deshmukh, Ashutosh, 2019. "Responses of US multinational firms to a temporary repatriation tax holiday: A literature review and synthesis," Journal of Accounting Literature, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 108-123.
    14. Ge, Wenxia & Kim, Jeong-Bon & Li, Tiemei & Li, Yutao, 2018. "Operations in offshore financial centers and loan syndicate structure," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 157-180.
    15. Mindy Herzfeld, 2021. "Designing international tax reform: lessons from TCJA," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(5), pages 1163-1187, October.
    16. Urooj Khan & Suresh Nallareddy & Ethan Rouen, 2020. "The Role of Taxes in the Disconnect Between Corporate Performance and Economic Growth," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 5427-5447, November.
    17. Chen, Novia X. & Shevlin, Terry, 2018. "“U.S. worldwide taxation and domestic mergers and acquisitions” a discussion✰," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 439-447.
    18. Bird, Andrew & Edwards, Alexander & Shevlin, Terry, 2017. "Does U.S. foreign earnings lockout advantage foreign acquirers?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 150-166.
    19. Kelley, Stacie O. & Lewellen, Christina M. & Lynch, Daniel P. & Samuel, David M.P., 2024. "“Just BEAT it” do firms reclassify costs to avoid the base erosion and anti-abuse tax (BEAT) of the TCJA?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2).
    20. Austin, Josh & Harris, Jeremiah & O'Brien, William, 2020. "Do the most prominent firms really make the worst deals? How selection issues affect inferences from M&A studies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    21. Rebecca Lester, 2019. "Made in the U.S.A.? A Study of Firm Responses to Domestic Production Incentives," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 1059-1114, September.

    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:wly:coacre:v:33:y:2016:i:1:p:44-77. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1911-3846 .

    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.