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兩稅合一制下調降營利事業所得稅率與股利發放之研究
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3. Findings
We predicted that the reduction of corporate income tax rate under the integrated
income tax system would lead to decreased dividend payouts,
ceteris paribus
. The results
indicate that the payout ratios of total dividends, stock dividends, and cash dividends
decreased significantly after the income tax rate was reduced, which support our hypotheses.
The purpose of levying an additional surtax on undistributed earnings is to reduce the
difference between corporate and personal income tax rates to relieve the tax-induced
distortion introduced by dividend payouts (Chang et al., 2008). However, the findings of this
study show that reducing the corporate income tax rate while maintaining the surtax rate
reduces the tax cost of retaining earnings, thereby creating opportunities for corporations to
reduce their dividend payouts (Deng, 2012; Chen, 2013). These results also support the
assertion that tax reforms influence dividend payment decisions.
In addition, dividend stability is positively related to total dividend payout ratios,
indicating that companies with more stable dividend payouts typically prefer a certain degree
of stability in total dividend payout ratios, despite tax rate changes. This finding shows the
importance of dividend payout stability. We also observe that a substitution effect exists
between stock and cash dividends, which is consistent with the findings of previous research.
The robustness checks performed in this study show some examinations for both sample
firms and selected variables. These include sample selection, dividend payout measurement,
and independent variable proxy. The results are robust for the aforementioned tests.
4. Research Limitations/Implications
Similar with the findings of previous research on classical or integrated tax systems, this
study supports the assertion that tax reforms affect dividend payouts. We show that firms
adjust their dividend payments to avoid shareholder tax burdens. The results support the
imposition of an additional surtax on undistributed earnings, as well as the need to increase
the surtax rate. In addition, we indicate the importance of dividend stability on dividend
payouts. Firms with more stable dividends are reluctant to adjust their dividend payouts,
even when tax reforms are imposed.
Our results are subject to the following limitations, and they should be interpreted with
some caveats. First of all, the results may be sample specific, particularly because our sample
firms are listed companies. Future studies should consider targeting small and medium firms
to investigate this topic. Secondly, the sample period was limited to six years because of data