IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/27470.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander F. Wagner
  • Richard J. Zeckhauser
  • Alexandre Ziegler

Abstract

The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) slashed corporations’ median effective tax rates from 31.7% to 20.8%. Nevertheless, 15% of firms experienced an increase. One fifth of firms recorded nonrecurring tax costs or benefits exceeding 3% of total assets. Proxies that existing studies employ to assess the TCJA’s impacts account for just half of actual impacts. Stock prices impounded those proxies during the legislative process. Total impacts were impounded the following year, once firms published their financials. These results indicate that investors find it hard to predict even large and immediate changes to company cash flows due to unfamiliar events.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2020. "The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Which Firms Won? Which Lost?," NBER Working Papers 27470, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27470
    Note: AP CF IFM IO ITI PR
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w27470.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joel Slemrod, 2018. "Is This Tax Reform, or Just Confusion?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 73-96, Fall.
    2. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2017. "Company Stock Reactions to the 2016 Election Shock: Trump, Taxes and Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 11837, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard J. & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2018. "Company stock price reactions to the 2016 election shock: Trump, taxes, and trade," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 428-451.
    4. Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2018. "Unequal Rewards to Firms: Stock Market Responses to the Trump Election and the 2017 Corporate Tax Reform," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 590-596, May.
    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. Aria Ardalan & Sebastian G. Kessing & Salmai Qari & Malte Zoubek, 2023. "Does capital bear the burden of local corporate taxes? Evidence from Germany," Volkswirtschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 194-23, Universität Siegen, Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Wirtschaftsinformatik und Wirtschaftsrecht.
    2. Martín Fuentes, Natalia & Di Vito, Luca & Leite, João Matos, 2023. "Understanding the profitability gap between euro area and US global systemically important banks," Occasional Paper Series 327, European Central Bank.
    3. 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).
    4. Christine L. Dobridge & Patrick Kennedy & Paul Landefeld & Jacob Mortenson, 2023. "The TCJA and Domestic Corporate Tax Rates," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2023-078, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    5. Kim, J.H. John & Anderson, Ronald, 2024. "CEO narcissism and the agency cost of debt," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(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. Kalcheva, Ivalina & Plečnik, James M. & Tran, Hai & Turkiela, Jason, 2020. "(Un)intended consequences? The impact of the 2017 tax cuts and jobs act on shareholder wealth," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Hanke, Michael & Stöckl, Sebastian & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2020. "Political event portfolios," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    3. Alexander F. Wagner & Richard J. Zeckhauser & Alexandre Ziegler, 2017. "Paths to Convergence: Stock Price Behavior After Donald Trump's Election," Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper Series 17-36, Swiss Finance Institute, revised Feb 2018.
    4. Blanchard, Olivier & Collins, Christopher G. & Jahan-Parvar, Mohammad R. & Pellet, Thomas & Wilson, Beth Anne, 2018. "A year of rising dangerously? The U.S. stock market performance in the aftermath of the presidential election," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 489-502.
    5. Daniel Klein & Christopher A. Ludwig & Christoph Spengel, 2019. "Ring-fencing Digital Corporations: Investor Reaction to the European Commission’s Digital Tax Proposals," EconPol Working Paper 36, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    6. Michelle Hanlon & Jeffrey L. Hoopes & Joel Slemrod, 2019. "Tax Reform Made Me Do It!," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(1), pages 33-80.
    7. Samson Mukanjari & Thomas Sterner, 2024. "Do markets Trump politics? Fossil and renewable market reactions to major political events," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 805-836, April.
    8. Xu, Mingli & Yang, Wei & Huang, Zhixiong, 2021. "Do investor relations matter in the tourism industry? Evidence from public opinions in China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 923-933.
    9. Müller, Isabella & Nguyen, Huyen & Nguyen, Trang, 2024. "Carbon transition risk and corporate loan securitization," IWH Discussion Papers 22/2022, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), revised 2024.
    10. Kohei Aono & Keiichi Hori, 2020. "Measuring the Value of Corporate Cash Holdings against Predictable and Unpredictable Negative Shocks," Discussion Paper Series 214-2, School of Economics, Kwansei Gakuin University, revised Apr 2021.
    11. Curcio, Domenico & Gianfrancesco, Igor & Vioto, Davide, 2023. "Climate change and financial systemic risk: Evidence from US banks and insurers," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    12. Monasterolo, Irene & de Angelis, Luca, 2020. "Blind to carbon risk? An analysis of stock market reaction to the Paris Agreement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    13. Raphael Auer & Bruce Muneaki Iwadate & Andreas Schrimpf & Alexander F. Wagner, 2022. "Global production linkages and stock market co-movement," BIS Working Papers 1003, Bank for International Settlements.
    14. Cazals, Antoine & Léon, Florian, 2023. "Perception of political instability in election periods: Evidence from African firms," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 259-276.
    15. Hanke, Michael & Stöckl, Sebastian & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2022. "Recovering election winner probabilities from stock prices," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    16. Andrew N. Greenland & Mihai Ion & John W. Lopresti & Peter K. Schott, 2020. "Using Equity Market Reactions to Infer Exposure to Trade Liberalization," NBER Working Papers 27510, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Gruenthaler, Thomas & Lorenz, Friedrich & Meyerhof, Paul, 2022. "Option-based intermediary leverage," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    18. Thomas L. Spreen & Juan P. Martinez Guzman, 2022. "Information sharing and state revenue forecasting performance," Public Budgeting & Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(4), pages 54-73, December.
    19. Park , Cyn-Young & Tian , Shu & Zhao , Bo, 2020. "Global Bitcoin Markets and Local Regulations," ADB Economics Working Paper Series 605, Asian Development Bank.
    20. Stefano Carattini & Suphi Sen, 2019. "Carbon Taxes and Stranded Assets: Evidence from Washington State," CESifo Working Paper Series 7785, CESifo.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • H25 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Business Taxes and Subsidies
    • O24 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Development Planning and Policy - - - Trade Policy; Factor Movement; Foreign Exchange Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:27470. 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 person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.