Cash holdings, tax policies, and institutional environments of innovative enterprises

We discover a positive association between a firm's innovativeness and its cash holdings using data from 11,653 innovative enterprises in 51 non-US economies. This relationship is even stronger now that patent boxes have been implemented, which provide preferential tax treatment for patent income. Additionally, creative multinationals that face increased repatriation taxes amass larger total cash holdings. The positive innovativeness–cash relationship is more pronounced in countries with higher R&D tax credits, less developed financial markets, stronger governance, stronger shareholder rights, more technicians, better infrastructure, and greater investment freedom, as well as in industries with fiercer competition and longer innovation cycles. Innovative organizations with greater cash on hand invest more in research and development and generate more patents. In general, our findings shed light on the factors that contribute to the massive wealth buildup in creative enterprises globally.

Repatriation Taxes, Internal Agency Conflicts, and Subsidiary-level Investment Efficiency

Using a global sample of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their foreign subsidiaries, we find that repatriation taxes impair subsidiary-level investment efficiency. Consistent with internal agency conflicts between the central management of the MNC and the manager of the foreign subsidiary being the driver, we show that this effect is concentrated in subsidiaries with high information asymmetry and in subsidiaries that are weakly monitored. Quasi-natural experiments in the UK and Japan establish a causal relationship for our findings and suggest that a repeal of repatriation taxes increases subsidiary-level investment efficiency while reducing the level of investment. Our paper provides timely empirical evidence to inform expectations for the effects of a recent change to the U.S. international tax law that eliminated repatriation taxes from most of the future foreign earnings of U.S. MNCs.

Firm-Specific Currency Exposure, Repatriation, and the Market Value of Repatriation Taxes

ABSTRACT As the U.S. dollar (USD) strengthens relative to foreign currencies, the USD value of foreign subsidiary-to-parent dividends decreases, and the foreign tax credit remains anchored at a blended rate. During periods of USD strength, this asymmetry lowers the effective tax cost of repatriation at the cost of a lower after-tax dividend to the U.S. parent. This paper develops a firm-specific measure of currency exposure and provides evidence that repatriation likelihood increases during periods of firm-specific USD strength. We show that investors place a premium on repatriation costs when the USD strengthens against a firm-specific basket of currencies for repatriating firms. This premium implies that investors value the benefit of a lower effective tax cost of repatriation more than the potential cost of a lower after-tax dividend available to the U.S. parent. These results appear concentrated in firms with high levels of foreign cash and firms susceptible to earnings fixation.

Repatriation Taxes and Foreign Cash Holdings: The Impact of Anticipated Tax Reform

We examine whether an anticipated reduction in future repatriation taxes affects the amount of cash U.S. multinationals hold overseas. We find that the expected benefits of a repatriation tax reduction are positively associated with accelerated accumulations of global cash holdings once Congress proposed legislation. Additional tests examining domestic and foreign corporations, voluntary disclosures of foreign cash, and corporate payout behavior support our conclusion that observed increases in excess global cash are driven by changes in foreign cash. We also document that U.S. multinationals accumulating excess cash engage in complementary organizational and financial reporting activities designed to maximize expected tax benefits.Received December 7, 2017; editorial decision August 18, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.