infonet-economy

This article studies the effect of dividend taxation on corporate behaviour, more specifically how firms respond to a dividend tax cut. A change in the Swiss corporate law in 2011 has introduced the possibility for some firms to pay tax-exempted dividends to their shareholders We find that all the firms that fulfilled the conditions required by the new law started paying tax-exempted dividends to their shareholders. This means that the management takes explicitly into account the tax treatment of their shareholders when setting corporate payout policy. We find that this reform has led to an increase in the propensity of firms to pay dividends as well as an increase in dividend payouts and dividend yields. This is consistent with the view that firms pay lower dividends in the presence of taxes.