We examine the associations among leverage, corporate and investor level taxes, and the firm's implied cost of equity capital. Expanding on Modigliani and Miller [1958, 1963], the cost of equity capital can be expressed as a function of leverage and corporate and investor level taxes. Based on this expression, we predict that the cost of equity is increasing in leverage, and that corporate taxes mitigate this leverage-related risk premium, while the personal tax disadvantage of debt increases this premium. We empirically test these predictions using implied cost of equity estimates and proxies for the firm's corporate tax rate and the personal tax disadvantage of debt. Our results suggest that the equity risk premium associated with leverage is decreasing in the corporate tax benefit from debt. We find some evidence that the equity risk premium from leverage is increasing in the personal tax penalty associated with debt.

In this paper, we present a review of tax research. We survey four main areas of the literature: (1) the informational role of income tax expense reported for financial accounting, (2) corporate tax avoidance, (3) corporate decision-making including investment, capital structure, and organizational form, and (4) taxes and asset pricing. We summarize the research areas and questions examined to date and what we have learned or not learned from the work completed thus far. In addition, we provide our opinion as to the interesting and important issues for future research.

ABSTRACT We ask whether the quality of internal information matters for investment decisions. We predict that investment is more sensitive to internal profit signals and less sensitive to external price signals when managers have higher‐quality internal information. Consistent with recent theoretical and empirical research, we proxy for internal information quality using observable information properties. We find that the sensitivity of investment to profitability is increasing, while the sensitivity of investment to market‐to‐book is decreasing in internal information quality. Our focus on internal information and decision making offers new and unique insights on the importance of information quality and complements the growing literature on the role of external reporting quality in reducing financing frictions.

Compelling empirical evidence documenting a material effect of corporate taxes on leverage decisions is limited, in part because of difficulties in constructing an effective proxy for the firm's tax benefit of debt. We examine leverage decisions across taxable and nontaxable real estate firms—firms for which we can measure the relative tax benefit of debt with little error. The tax hypothesis implies that for firms with similar asset portfolios, taxable firms should have more debt than their nontaxable counterparts. Consistent with this, leverage ratios of taxable real estate firms are higher than their nontaxable counterparts, but the magnitude of this difference is at most one-half of that implied by studies that employ simulated marginal tax rates.

We investigate the backdating of stock option exercises. Before SOX, we find evidence that some exercises were backdated to days with low stock prices. Consistent with a tax-based incentive, these suspect exercises are more likely when the personal tax savings from backdating are higher. However, suspect CEO exercises generate average (median) estimated tax savings of 96,000 (7,000). These savings appear modest relative to the costs insiders and firms face. We find that the likelihood of a suspect exercise increases in the likelihood of option grant backdating. This suggests that agency problems associated with backdating permeate option compensation in some firms.

ABSTRACT We examine the relation between corporate cash holdings and tax net operating loss carryforwards (NOLs). The literature demonstrates that firms should distribute cash to shareholders rather than retain it and generate passive investment income taxed at both corporate and investor levels. However, if the firm's tax rate on passive income is lower than shareholders'—as when the firm has NOLs—theory also shows that the firm should retain cash and invest on the shareholders' behalf. Consistent with this, we find that NOLs are associated with higher levels of savings; firms save an additional $0.12 to $0.17 per dollar of tax-effected NOL benefit. Furthermore, investors place a higher value on corporate cash in tax loss firms, consistent with NOLs increasing the after-tax returns on passive investments. The paper adds to the literature studying corporate financial policy responses to taxation and quantifies the role of NOLs in corporate savings decisions.

ABSTRACT We find evidence that equity returns increase with the propensity for tax planning in a firm's industry. This risk premium is imposed on all firms in the industry, even those that are less aggressive than their peers. The industry-based risk premium coexists with a firm-specific discount associated with active tax planning strategies that carry low systematic risk. The discount on tax planning at the firm level, however, is dwarfed by the premium on tax planning at the industry level, and is concentrated in industries that are less likely to attract scrutiny from the tax authority.

Under GAAP, SEC and exchange listing rules, managers must disclose material information. We construct a disclosure specification incorporating managers’ obligation to disclose material information and voluntary disclosure incentives. We demonstrate that tests of the incentives to voluntarily disclose information must recognize such information is often disclosed because of an underlying duty to disclose. Our empirical tests isolating the impact of materiality on firms’ disclosures have greater explanatory power over empirical tests that do not. Voluntary disclosure incentives better explain disclosure when the information is less likely to be material. Tests of voluntary disclosure theories ignoring materiality likely lead to incorrect inferences.

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the implications of tax loss carryback incentives for corporate reporting decisions and capital market behavior. During the 1981 through 2010 sample period, we find that firms increase losses in order to claim a cash refund of recent tax payments before the option to do so expires, and we estimate that firms with tax refund-based incentives accelerate about $64.7 billion in losses. Tax-motivated loss shifting is reflected in both recurring and nonrecurring items and is more evident for financially constrained firms. Analysts do not generally incorporate tax-motivated loss shifting into their earnings forecasts, resulting in more negative analyst forecast errors for firms with tax-based incentives than for firms without. Holding earnings surprises constant, however, investors react less negatively to losses reported by firms with tax loss carryback incentives. Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the paper.