The Effect of Foreign Dividend Exemption on Profit Repatriation through Dividends, Royalties, and Interest: Evidence from Japan

Makoto Hasegawa and Michi Kakebayashi

Discussion papers from Graduate School of Economics , Kyoto University

Abstract: Multinational corporations repatriate foreign profits through dividends, royalties, and interest paid by foreign affiliates to their parent firms. International tax rules concerning how to tax repatriated foreign earnings influence decisions on profit repatriation. In 2009, Japan introduced a foreign dividend exemption system (so-called territorial tax system) that exempted dividends received by Japanese firms from their foreign affiliates from home-country taxation. This paper examines the effects of this tax reform on profit repatriation through dividends, royalties, and interest. The enactment of the foreign dividend exemption system decreased the effective tax rate on foreign income repatriated through dividends on average by 6.8 percentage points in 2009. We find that in response to this tax rate reduction, Japanese-owned foreign affiliates increased dividend payments, but did not change either royalty or interest payments. As a result, these affiliates increased the total payments to their Japanese parents.

Keywords: International taxation; Multinational corporations; Profit repatriation; Foreign dividend exemption; Worldwide tax system; Territorial tax system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 H25 H26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-int, nep-inv and nep-pbe
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kue:epaper:e-20-004-v2

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