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The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of 19 Malaysian Real Estate Investment Trusts (M-REITs) over the period 1999 to 2014, following the implementation of dividend tax reforms announced in the 2007, 2009 and 2012 budgets.

Sharpe index, Treynor index and Jensen α are utilized to compare the performance of M-REITs against a newly developed tax-adjusted value-weighted M-REITs index, equity market, property sector and three month Malaysia Treasury Bills (T-Bills). The calculation of M-REITs returns has been adjusted to take into account the dividend tax reforms which have never been considered in previous studies.

Most M-REITs outperform the tax-adjusted value-weighted REITs index, equity market, property sector and three month T-Bills. Property sector performs worst during those periods. Some of the M-REITs have a higher standard deviation than the equity market and the tax-adjusted value-weighted M-REITs index. Most M-REITs have a lower total risk than the property sector. Further analysis shows that before (after) the tax reforms, most M-REITs underperform (outperform) the other sectors. The introduction of the tax reforms benefits both REITs and investors. A significant positive Jensen α for some M-REITs indicates that fund managers are able to time the market or to select undervalued assets.

Findings of the study would enable investors to evaluate the performance of all REITs in comparison to other financial assets during the period of study for better investment decision making. A more accurate assessment on REITs performance that take into account the tax reforms, is available for investors and fund managers to decide on the investment mix to be included in their portfolio. Moreover, fund managers’ performance can be assessed whether they perform better or worse than the equity market, property sector and three month T-Bills.

This study contributes to the scant literature on dividend tax reforms and their implication toward REITs performance. It is the first study to thoroughly assess the returns of REITs by taking into account the changes on dividend tax rates announced in the 2007, 2009 and 2012 budgets.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the significant dividend tax rate reduction for individual investors in Canada in 2006 affected firms’ payout policies.

Using regression models, the authors examine the impact of the 2006 dividend tax cut on dividends and share repurchases in Canadian listed firms from 2003 to 2008. The authors also ran a multinomial logit regression to examine choices between payout policies.

Following the tax cut, firms increased their dividend payouts, with larger increases for firms in which shareholders benefited from the reduced tax rate. However, the 2006 tax cut appears to have had no negative effect on distributions through share repurchases. After the 2006 dividend tax cut, firms owned by shareholders subject to dividend taxes were more likely to use a combination of distribution mechanisms than share repurchases only, dividends only, or no payouts.

Shareholders’ tax preferences are an important factor for firms to consider when designing payout distribution policies. Following the 2006 dividend tax cut, firms increased their dividend payouts.

The findings provide tax regulators with insight into how firms react to tax reform. They suggest that firms adapt their payout policy in the face of: a noteworthy dividend tax cut (6.2 per cent); a dividend tax cut that does not encourage tax arbitrage; and a dividend tax cut that does not economically favour dividend payment over share repurchases.

The paper considers the 2006 dividend tax rate cut in Canada, which presents a number of significant features that allow capturing the effect of a tax cut on payout policies.

The purpose of this paper is to examine three different responses to the Finnish 2005 tax reform that, among other things, reduced the corporate tax rate and hiked dividend taxation. Focus lies on the factors influencing the decision to change the fiscal year-end and whether earnings management is more prevalent when the decision is not taken.

This study uses the financial statement data of Finnish private firms and studies 350 fiscal year-end changing firms and 700 non-changing firms with logistic and linear regression analysis. Discretionary accruals are the proxy for earnings management.

The results suggest that firms seize the window of opportunity and extend fiscal years depending on the magnitude of the expected tax savings. Firms that do not change their fiscal year-end engage in more tax-induced earnings management. In terms of economic consequences, the earnings management approach is less economically significant.

This study only examines a limited number of firms that change their fiscal year-end, hence, care has been exercised in generalising the findings.

The findings may be considered when structuring future tax reforms, particularly when considering transition rules relating to changes in fiscal year-ends. The study may also have implications beyond tax reforms since the evidence of opportunistic changes in the fiscal year-end can be informative for tax authorities, independent auditors and creditors.

This study contributes to the relatively scarce literature on private firm responses to tax policy changes by analysing both upward and downward earnings management, as well as changes in the fiscal year-end. This is in contrast to previous research that mainly focusses on listed firms and absolute earnings management or earnings management in one direction.

This chapter presents both main arguments of dividend policy theories and their empirical evidence. According to Miller and Modigliani (1961), dividend decisions are not relevant to firm value in a perfect capital market. Nevertheless, there are several market frictions in the real world (e.g., information asymmetry, agency problems, transaction costs, firm maturity, catering incentives and taxes). Therefore, academics use them to develop theories which help them explain corporate dividend decisions. Particularly, signaling theory considers dividend payments as a signal about firms' future prospects since outside investors face information disadvantage. “Bird-in-hand” theory argues that investors prefer dividends to capital gains since the former have lower risk than the latter. Agency theory is developed from the conflict of interest between corporate managers and shareholders. Corporate managers have high incentives to restrict dividend payments. Furthermore, transaction cost theory and pecking order theory posit that firms prefer internal to external funds. This drives firms to hold more cash and pay less dividends. Life cycle theory explains dividend policy by firm maturity. Mature firms have fewer investment opportunities, and thus, they tend to pay more dividends. Catering theory states that dividend decisions are based on investors' demand. Firms pay more dividends since investors prefer dividends and assign higher value to dividend payers. Tax clientele theory argues that firms that have corporate dividend policy rely on the comparative income tax rates for dividends and capital gains. Under the tax discriminations against dividends, firms tend to restrict their dividends in order to increase their stock prices.

In public firms, the largest shareholder can make decisions on cash dividends in favor of its own interests at the expense of other investors. While the second largest shareholder can actively participate in corporate governance and protect the interests of investors, its impact has not been fully understood. This research investigates how shareholding ratio and ownership type of the second largest shareholder moderate the relationship between controlling shareholder's shareholding ratio and cash dividends.

The authors conducted econometrics analysis based on a panel data of China's A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2017.

The authors find that the controlling shareholder's shareholding ratio has a significant negative impact on cash dividends. However, this influence is conditional on the shareholding ratio of the second largest shareholder. The negative impact is weakened when the second largest shareholder holds a large proportion of shares or when the shareholding gap between the second largest and the controlling shareholder is small.

This research extends the existing literature by highlighting the nuanced moderating effect of the second largest shareholder on the relationship between the controlling shareholder and cash dividends, thus making a unique contribution to the understanding of corporate governances in the emerging financial market in China.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the audit of outgoing leading officials' natural resource accountability and environmental governance, as well as the internal mechanism of audit of outgoing leading officials' natural resource accountability that plays a role in national environmental governance.

Based on city-level panel data from 2012 to 2015, this paper adopts a difference-in-difference model to examine the role of government audit in national governance from an environmental perspective. Furthermore, using a mediating effect model, the study sheds light on the internal mechanism of audit of outgoing leading officials’ natural resource accountability that plays a role in national environmental governance.

This paper finds that: the implementation of the audit of outgoing leading officials’ natural resource accountability has significantly improved the water quality of the pilot area, but its effects on waste gas and smoke are not obvious; environmental supervision partly plays a mediating role in the improvement of regional environmental governance by the audit of outgoing leading officials’ natural resource accountability; the audit of outgoing leading officials’ natural resource accountability can complement the incentive mechanism of promotion. The older the local officials are, the more obvious the effect of the audit of outgoing leading officials’ natural resource accountability on the environmental quality of the pilot areas is.

This paper reveals the role of government audit from the perspective of environmental governance. It provides empirical evidence for policy regarding the audit of outgoing leading officials' natural resource accountability.