IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rba/rbardp/rdp9211.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Dividends and Taxation: A Preliminary Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • Tim Callen

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

  • Steven Morling

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

  • Jill Pleban

    (Reserve Bank of Australia)

Abstract

Several recent tax changes have increased the incentive for companies to pay dividends compared to retaining earnings. These are the introduction of the Capital Gains Tax (CGT), dividend imputation and the taxation of the earnings of superannuation funds. In this paper we examine the determinants of a company’s dividend policy and within this framework look at how these tax changes have influenced dividend payments. We present some empirical results that suggest that both cash flow and tax considerations are significant determinants of dividend behaviour. Real dividends per share increased by about 38 per cent between 1985/86 and 1990/91. We estimate that the tax changes account for a rise in real dividends per share of about 20 per cent during that period.

Suggested Citation

  • Tim Callen & Steven Morling & Jill Pleban, 1992. "Dividends and Taxation: A Preliminary Investigation," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9211, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    • Handle: RePEc:rba:rbardp:rdp9211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/1992/pdf/rdp9211.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holtz-Eakin, Douglas & Newey, Whitney & Rosen, Harvey S, 1988. "Estimating Vector Autoregressions with Panel Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1371-1395, November.
    2. James M. Poterba & Lawrence H. Summers, 1984. "The Economic Effects of Dividend Taxation," NBER Working Papers 1353, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. B. Douglas Berhheim, 1991. "Tax Policy and the Dividend Puzzle," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(4), pages 455-476, Winter.
    4. Keane, Michael P & Runkle, David E, 1992. "On the Estimation of Panel-Data Models with Serial Correlation When Instruments Are Not Strictly Exogenous," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 10(1), pages 1-9, January.
    5. Sudipto Bhattacharya, 1979. "Imperfect Information, Dividend Policy, and "The Bird in the Hand" Fallacy," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 259-270, Spring.
    6. Amemiya, Takeshi & MaCurdy, Thomas E, 1986. "Instrumental-Variable Estimation of an Error-Components Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(4), pages 869-880, July.
    7. Miller, Merton H & Rock, Kevin, 1985. "Dividend Policy under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 1031-1051, September.
    8. Breusch, Trevor S & Mizon, Grayham E & Schmidt, Peter, 1989. "Efficient Estimation Using Panel Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 695-700, 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. Philip Lowe & Geoffrey Shuetrim, 1992. "The Evolution of Corporate Financial Structure: 1973–1990," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp9216, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    2. David Rodgers & Jonathan Hambur, 2018. "The GFC Investment Tax Break," RBA Research Discussion Papers rdp2018-07, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    3. Mark Westcott & John Murray, 2017. "Financialisation and inequality in Australia," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 28(4), pages 519-537, December.

    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. Ahn, Seung C. & Lee, Young H. & Schmidt, Peter, 2013. "Panel data models with multiple time-varying individual effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 174(1), pages 1-14.
    2. B. Douglas Bernheim & Lee Redding, 1995. "Optimal Money Burning," Working Papers 96010, Stanford University, Department of Economics.
    3. Mihir A. Desai & C. Fritz Foley & James R. Hines Jr., 2002. "Dividend Policy inside the Firm," NBER Working Papers 8698, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Andrews, Donald W. K. & Lu, Biao, 2001. "Consistent model and moment selection procedures for GMM estimation with application to dynamic panel data models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 101(1), pages 123-164, March.
    5. Martin D. Dietz & Christian Keuschnigg, 2004. "Corporate Income Tax Reform in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 140(IV), pages 483-519, December.
    6. Bechman, Ken L. & Raaballe, Johannes, 2006. "Taxable Cash Dividends," Working Papers 2005-4, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Finance.
    7. Donald W.K. Andrews & Biao Lu, 1999. "Consistent Model and Moment Selection Criteria for GMM Estimation with Applications to Dynamic Panel Data Models," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1233, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    8. Roger Gordon & Martin Dietz, 2006. "Dividends and Taxes," NBER Working Papers 12292, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Sven-Olov Daunfeldt & Carina Selander & Magnus Wikstrom, 2009. "Taxation, Dividend Payments and Ex-Day Price-Changes," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 13(1-2), pages 135-154, March-Jun.
    10. Toru Yoshikawa & Abdul A. Rasheed, 2010. "Family Control and Ownership Monitoring in Family‐Controlled Firms in Japan," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(2), pages 274-295, March.
    11. Andres, Christian & Doumet, Markus & Fernau, Erik & Theissen, Erik, 2015. "The Lintner model revisited: Dividends versus total payouts," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 56-69.
    12. Ahn, Seung C. & Schmidt, Peter, 1995. "Efficient estimation of models for dynamic panel data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 5-27, July.
    13. Bernheim, B Douglas & Wantz, Adam, 1995. "A Tax-Based Test of the Dividend Signaling Hypothesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 532-551, June.
    14. Nekat, Kai & Nippel, Peter, 2007. "The impact of a firm's payout policy on stock prices and shareholders' wealth in an inefficient market," Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel 619, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre.
    15. Renneboog, L.D.R. & Trojanowski, G., 2005. "Patterns in Payout Policy and Payout Channel Choice of UK Firms in the 1990s," Discussion Paper 2005-002, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    16. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1996. "Estimating systems of equations with different instruments for different equations," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 387-405, October.
    17. Chay, Kenneth Y. & Lee, David S., 2000. "Changes in relative wages in the 1980s Returns to observed and unobserved skills and black-white wage differentials," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 99(1), pages 1-38, November.
    18. Jan Bena & Jan Hanousek, 2008. "Rent Extraction by Large Shareholders: Evidence Using Dividend Policy in the Czech Republic," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 58(03-04), pages 106-130, May.
    19. Malcolm Baker & Brock Mendel & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2016. "Dividends as Reference Points: A Behavioral Signaling Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 697-738.
    20. Arellano, Manuel & Bover, Olympia, 1995. "Another look at the instrumental variable estimation of error-components models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 29-51, July.

    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:rba:rbardp:rdp9211. 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: Paula Drew (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rbagvau.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.