The Impact of Private Equity Ownership on Corporate Tax Avoidance

This study investigates whether private equity (PE) firms influence the tax practices of their portfolio firms. Prior research documents that PE firms create economic value in portfolio firms through effective governance, financial, and operational engineering. Given PE firms' focus on value creation, we examine whether PE firms influence the extent and types of tax avoidance at portfolio firms as an additional source of economic value. We document that PE-backed portfolio firms engage in significantly more nonconforming tax planning and have lower marginal tax rates than other private firms. Moreover, we document that PE-backed portfolio firms pay 14.2 percent less income tax per dollar of pre-tax income than non-PE backed firms, after controlling for NOLs and debt tax shields. We find additional tax savings for PE-backed portfolio firms that are either majority-owned or owned by large PE firms, consistent with PE ownership stake, expertise, and resources serving as important factors in the tax practices of portfolio firms. We infer that PE firms view tax planning as an additional source of economic value in their portfolio firms, where the benefits outweigh any potential reputational costs associated with corporate tax avoidance.Private equity, ownership structure, tax avoidance, tax planning, tax aggressiveness, book-tax differences.

The Pricing and Performance of Supercharged IPOs

This study examines a new form of initial public offerings, “supercharged” IPOs, where a firm organized pre-IPO as a pass-through entity undergoes a series of transactions that steps-up the adjusted tax basis of the IPO firm’s assets. This step-up imposes tax liabilities on pre-IPO owners but also creates significant future tax benefits for the firm; the average anticipated deferred tax asset is $486 million ($13 per share) for our sample of supercharged IPO firms. Pursuant to tax receivable agreements, supercharged IPO firms pay a large portion of these tax benefits to pre-IPO owners as they are realized in the future. Future firm performance must be sufficiently strong for the IPO firm and the pre-IPO owners to realize the future tax benefits created by the supercharged transaction structure. We hypothesize and provide evidence of higher IPO offer prices and stronger future performance for supercharged IPO firms relative to traditional IPO firms

Market Reaction to Events Surrounding the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and Earnings Management

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 is the most important legislation affecting corporate financial reporting enacted in the United States since the 1930s. Its purpose is to improve the accuracy and reliability of accounting information that is reported to investors. We examine stock price reactions to legislative events surrounding SOX and focus on whether such stock price effects are related cross-sectionally to the extent firms had managed their earnings. Our univariate results suggest that significantly positive abnormal stock returns are associated with SOX events, and our primary analyses reveal considerable evidence of a positive relationship between SOX event stock returns and the extent of earnings management. These results are consistent with investors anticipating that the more extensively firms had managed their earnings, the more SOX would constrain earnings management and enhance the quality of financial statement information. (c) 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..