Banks and Tax-Exempt Debt Arbitrage

James Hines and Emily Horton

No 32647, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Interest paid by U.S. state and local bonds is tax-exempt, making these bonds attractive to investors – though a tax rule limits arbitrage opportunities by restricting associated interest expense deductions. Prior to 1986, U.S. banks were not subject to the interest deduction limitation, making banks preferred holders of tax-exempt debt. U.S. banks used tax-exempt debt to reduce their tax liabilities by roughly 20% in the 1950s and 45% in the 1960s, rising to as much as 80% by the early 1980s. Despite their special exemption, and in part because of their widespread holdings, banks did not benefit from investing in tax-exempt bonds, as competition between banks reduced bond yields to the point of investor indifference. The absence of a tax benefit from arbitrage appears not only in observed bond yields, but also in banks’ considerable unused potential for further tax reductions. After the Tax Reform Act of 1986 removed their special tax exemption, banks significantly reduced their holdings of tax-exempt debt, particularly among banks most severely impacted by the rule change.

JEL-codes: G21 H25 H74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ban, nep-pbe and nep-pub
Note: PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32647.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32647

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32647
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().