Shareholder tax cuts with household and firm heterogeneity

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2023.104173

The large reduction in dividend tax rates stipulated in the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 has been found empirically to have no, or minor, effects on real outcomes. Motivated by this fact, we build a model that incorporates counteracting theoretical mechanisms of dividend taxes to determine which mechanism dominates quantitatively. Consistently with the empirical findings, the quantitative model generates a small negative effect on investment and negligible positive effects on output and labor earnings.