Suchergebnisse

Durch die Internationalisierung der handelsrechtlichen Rechnungslegung wird auch die steuerliche Gewinnermittlung Veränderungen unterliegen. Eine mögliche Entwicklung besteht in der Übernahme der Einnahmen-Überschuss-Rechnung (EÜR) durch Unternehmen, die bislang den Vermögensvergleich angewandt haben. In dieser Arbeit werden die Steuerbelastungsverschiebungen dieser Modifikation aufgezeigt. Hierzu wird eine Unternehmenssimulation auf Basis empirischer Daten entwickelt, die ermöglicht, die Auswirkungen eines Übergangs vom Vermögensvergleich zur EÜR für Unternehmen verschiedener Rechtsformen und Branchen zu quantifizieren. Die Monte Carlo-Simulation zeigt auf, dass die Anwendung der EÜR an Stelle des Vermögensvergleichs in fast allen Branchen zu deutlichen Steuerbe- oder -entlastungen führt. Branchen- und rechtsformabhängig lassen sich deutlich Gewinner und Verlierer einer möglichen Reform der Gewinnermittlungsregeln in Richtung der EÜR identifizieren. -- Investition ; Unternehmensbesteuerung ; Gewinnermittlung ; Einnahmen-Überschuss-Rechnung

The European Union (EU) has no explicit common income tax law. Nevertheless, Court of Justice decisions have driven EU member states to adopt more similar corporate tax systems, and thus, to align the tax treatment of corporate profit distributions - dividends and capital gains. This paper empirically analyzes the influence of the tax preferences of individual and corporate shareholders for the two corporate distribution types - dividends or capital gains - from 1990 to 2012. In the first years of the observation period, European tax systems have provided opposing tax advantages, where individual shareholders have preferred capital gains and corporate shareholders have preferred dividends. To account for these differences depending on the firm's shareholder structure, we derive firm-specific tax preferences for profit distributions. Our empirical analysis reveals that - in line with current literature - the firm-specific tax preferences indeed affect dividend payments. Moreover, we show that in contrast to our detailed study, a simplified approach to measure tax effects on distributions overestimates this influence. In subsequent years, as European Court of Justice decisions have indirectly aligned EU corporate tax systems, we find that tax preferences have converged to a great extent with the tendency to equal tax treatment of dividends and capital gains for both - individual and corporate - shareholder groups. In line with this development, we find that the association of tax preferences and distribution policies vanishes in the last years of the observation period. Our study implies that the EU common regulatory framework, even in the absence of explicit law, can affect corporate distribution decisions and foster neutral taxation of dividends and capital gains across EU member states.

For more than 50 years, researchers around the world have been searching for a solution to Blacks famous 'dividend-puzzle'. However, despite tremendous efforts in different fields of economics, the influence of taxation on the distribution policy of firms has remained elusive and is still subject to extensive debate amongst scholars, professionals and politicians alike. In this paper, we try to shed some light on the discussion by presenting new empirical evidence from German tax reforms. Using a sample containing all firms listed at the Frankfurt stock exchange in the years from 1993 to 2009, we find robust evidence, that the switch from a split-rate tax system with full imputation to a shareholder relief system in 2002 and the change to a flat tax system in 2009 led to significant changes in the payout behavior of German firms. In line with the 'traditional view' of dividend taxation, German decision-makers cut back their dividend payments in response to the reduced advantageousness of dividends in comparison to capital gains after the reform.