The Changing Role of Auditors in Corporate Tax Planning

This paper examines changes in the role that auditors play in corporate tax planning following recent events, including the well-known accounting scandals, passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and regulatory actions by the SEC and PCAOB. On the whole, these events have increased the sensitivity to and scrutiny of auditor independence. We examine the effects of these events on the market for tax planning, in particular the longstanding link between audit and tax services. While the effects are recent, they are already being seen in the data. Specifically, there has already been a dramatic shift in the market for tax planning away from obtaining tax planning services from one's auditor. We estimate that the ratio of tax fees to audit fees paid to the auditors of firms in the S&P 500 decline from approximately one in 2001 to one-fourth in 2004. At the same time, we find no evidence of a general decline in spending for tax services. In sum, the evidence indicates a decoupling of the longstanding link between audit and tax services, such that firms are shifting their purchase of tax services away from their auditor and towards other providers.

Capitalization of Capital Gains Taxes: Evidence from Stock Price Reactions to the 1997 Rate Reduction

We empirically document that stock prices moved inversely with dividend yields during the May, 1997 week, when the White House and Congress agreed on a budget accord that included a reduction in the capital gains tax rate. The share prices of firms not currently paying dividends increased approximately 6 percentage points more over a five-day window than the share prices of other firms. Among firms paying dividends, the change in share prices was decreasing in dividend yields. The results are consistent with at least two related explanations. First, to the extent a stock's returns are expected to be taxed as capital gains, a reduction in the expected capital gains tax rate enhances the attractiveness of the investment to investors. Second, to the extent a firm's stock is held by shareholders subject to the capital gains tax, a reduction in the expected capital gains tax rate increases its market value. The findings present evidence consistent with neither a sell-off of appreciated securities following the rate reduction nor a reduction in the compensation for capital gains taxes that selling shareholders demand from buyers. The upward price pressure around the accord dominated any downward price pressure imposed by these factors.

Diversification and the Taxation of Capital Gains and Losses

Current U.S. law nets the total portfolio of realized capital gains and losses to compute capital gains taxes. Prior research, however, typically ignores the implication of this provision, i.e., the marginal tax rate for a specific gain or loss depends on the taxpayer's total portfolio of realized gains and losses. We find that these nettings introduce complexity into the relation between share values and capital gains taxes, creating an incentive to diversify. For firms with stock returns that are positively (negatively) correlated with those of the overall market, share values generally are decreasing (increasing) in the capital gains tax rate.

The Impact of State Taxes on Self-Insurance

This paper assesses whether insurers' state taxes reduce purchases of property-casualty coverage. Tests are conducted using state aggregates of insurer-level data from publicly-available, annual accounting reports for 1993, 1994, and 1995. A positive relation between self-insurance and state taxes is detected, consistent with consumers opting to self-insure rather than bear the incidence of higher insurer taxes. The primary empirical estimates imply that a 1 percent increase in the state premium tax rate reduces non-automobile insured losses by 0.18 percent to 0.28 percent. These elasticities suggest that for the mean state, a standard deviation increase in the state tax rate (0.5 percent) would lower insured losses by approximately $140 million or 7.5 percent of current coverage. As expected, tax effects vary with the elasticity of demand. When demand is largely inelastic, e.g., automobile liability coverage, taxes do not affect self-insurance.

A Unifying Model of How the Tax System and Generally Accepted Accounting Principles Affect Corporate Behavior

This paper models the impact of the tax system and GAAP on the real and financial reporting decisions of corporations. It provides a first step toward joint evaluation of taxation and financial reporting in the standard economic analyses of corporate behavior. The key finding is that value arises from real decisions that provide firms with discretion in their tax and financial reporting. This desire for flexibility modifies the optimal decisions of firms, in theory, and we provide examples that illustrate this behavior in the real world.

Capital Gains Taxes and Stock Reactions to Quarterly Earnings Announcements

This paper examines the impact of capital gains taxes on equity pricing. Examining three-day cumulative abnormal returns for quarterly earning announcements from 1983-1997, we present evidence consistent with shareholders' capital gains taxes affecting stock price responses. To our knowledge, this is the first study to link shareholder taxes and share price responses to earnings releases. The results imply that shares trade at higher (lower) prices when individual investors face incremental taxes (tax savings) created by selling appreciated (depreciated) shares before they qualify for long-term treatment. Unlike prior studies that have focused on price reactions in settings where shareholder taxes are unusually salient (e.g., tax law changes, turn-of-the-year trading, or tax-sensitive transactions), this study finds the imprint of capital gains taxes in a more general setting.

Did Dividends Increase Immediately After the 2003 Reduction in Tax Rates?

The Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 reduces the maximum statutory personal tax rate on dividends from 38.1 percent to 15 percent. This study analyzes dividend declarations in the quarter following passage. Aggregate dividends rose by 9 percent when boards of directors first met following enactment. Consistent with the dividend changes being tax-motivated, they are increasing in the percentage of the firm held by individuals. Dividend changes also increased with insider ownership, consistent with managers acting in their own interests. However, these results are limited primarily to firms that made large, special dividends. We find little evidence of an increase in regular, quarterly dividend payments.

Copycat Funds: Information Disclosure Regulation and the Returns to Active Management in the Mutual Fund Industry

Mutual funds must disclose their portfolio holdings to investors semiannually. The costs and benefits of such disclosures are a long-standing subject of debate. For actively managed funds, one cost of disclosure is a potential reduction in the private benefits from research on asset values. Disclosure provides public access to information on the assets that the fund manager views as undervalued. This paper tries to quantify this potential cost of disclosure by testing whether 'copycat' mutual funds, funds that purchase the same assets as actively-managed funds as soon as those asset holdings are disclosed, can earn returns that are similar to those of the actively-managed funds. Copycat funds do not incur the research expenses associated with the actively-managed funds that they are mimicking opportunity to invest in assets that managers identify as positive return opportunities between disclosure dates. Our results for a limited sample of high expense funds in the 1990s suggest that while returns before expenses are significantly higher for the underlying actively managed funds relative to the copycat funds, after expenses copycat funds earn statistically indistinguishable, and possibly higher, returns than the underlying actively managed funds. These findings contribute to the policy debate on the optimal level and frequency of fund disclosure.