Back in 2013, I joked that “you get bipartisanship when the Stupid Party and the Evil Party both agree on something.”
That generally means bad outcomes, with the TARP bailout being a prime illustration.
We now have another example since many Republicans and Democrats want to restrict
– or even ban – companies from buying shares from owners (i.e., company shareholders).
Known as stock buybacks, these share purchases should be viewed as an innocuous way of distributing profits.
But you’ll see below that many politicians think they be able to dictate how private businesses operate.
First, let’s look at some excerpts from the Tax Foundation’s very useful primer on the issue.
It’s important to understand why stock buybacks occur and the economic role they play. The new tax law lowered the corporate income tax rate… A lower rate also means that corporations will receive larger profits than anticipated on investments they made in the past—it should be expected that companies
would share at least some of this unexpected increase in cash with their shareholders. …Stock buybacks are complements to investment, not substitutes for it. Research shows that stock buybacks do not deprive firms of capital that they would otherwise invest, and further, that stock buybacks can facilitate long-term investment by redirecting funds from lower growth firms to higher growth firms. …Limiting the ability of a corporation to return value to shareholders—value which was created by productive investments made in the past—will not improve economic conditions.
Many experts from the worlds of finance, business, and public policy have tried to explain why stock buybacks should not be viewed as controversial.
In a column for the Wall Street Journal, for instance, Donald Luskin and Chris Hynes explain why it’s a bad idea to curtail buybacks.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren would require, among other things, that to receive aid…companies receiving aid be permanently barred from executing share buybacks, even after the aid is repaid. This is an opportunistic mutation of the left’s longstanding claim that buybacks are a uniquely evil form of predatory capitalism.
In reality, buybacks create benefits for shareholders large and small… Shareholders must receive a dividend when it’s declared and pay taxes on it. In a share buyback, investors who want cash can sell some shares and pay taxes. If they don’t want cash, they can choose to hold on to their shares. …Some opponents of buybacks…argue that they waste company cash that ought to be reinvested in plant and equipment. But not every company is in growth mode, and even those that are might have more cash than growth ideas. …Paying money out to shareholders frees them to reinvest in new companies with big growth ideas. This is the best way to promote growth for the economy as a whole.
The Washington Post is not exactly a hotbed of libertarian thinking, so it’s noteworthy that its editorial warned that politicians shouldn’t be dictating private business choices.
the practice by which public corporations use spare cash to buy back their own stock has turned into a policy flash point for both Democrats and Republicans. The basic allegation is that profits devoted to stock buybacks…are profits not plowed back into new plants, equipment or higher wages.
…Contrary to the concerns about diverting investment funds, U.S. nonresidential investment and job creation have been rising for most of the past decade. When shareholders get cash for their stocks, the money doesn’t disappear; it flows through the economy, often as productive investment elsewhere. …Perhaps a tax change would accomplish something — though companies would still have an incentive to give spare cash back to shareholders as long as there is no clearly superior investment alternative. Critics of stock buybacks are saying, in effect, that elected officials or regulators may know better than companies themselves what should be done with extra cash.
Writing for the Foundation for Economic Education, Ethan Lamb points out why Senator Cory Booker doesn’t understand the economics of buybacks.
Senator Cory Booker…reintroduced the “Workers Dividend Act,” which would mandate corporations match every dollar spent on buybacks with compensation toward employees. …this bill presupposes that stock buybacks are inherently bad for society. …Booker doesn’t understand the function of stock buybacks.
…Buybacks are just another mechanism, like dividends, to return money to shareholders. …Booker and company will also argue that stock buybacks come at the expense of investment, whether it be in the form of wages or capital expenditures. …none of that is true. …stock buybacks are a brilliant example of the free-market system offering a win-win to both parties. In other words, when the corporation purchases its own stock, the money from that exchange has to go somewhere. Presumably, the investor that just received the money would re-invest in another company that would be more inclined to use that money on investments in labor, R&D, or capital.
The editors of the Wall Street Journal warned about the risks of government intervention.
Stock buybacks are the latest bipartisan piñata, whacked by politicians on the left and right who misunderstand capital markets. …Repurchasing shares is simply one way a company can return cash to owners if it lacks better ideas for investment. …Senators complain that “when corporations direct resources to buy back shares on this scale, they restrain their capacity to reinvest.”
But the money doesn’t fall into a black hole. An investor who sells stock into a buyback will save or reinvest the proceeds. …Banning buybacks won’t create better investment options inside companies. Instead CEOs may spend more on corporate jets or pet projects with marginal economic returns. …A recent report from Mr. Rubio floats the idea of raising tax rates on buybacks. …For example: “An increased tax rate on repurchases might raise revenue to finance other incentives for capital investment.” In other words, Mr. Rubio wants politicians to have more leverage to direct how businesses deploy their capital. This would produce less investment, not more, with corresponding damage to workers and federal revenue.
Jon Hartley, in an article for National Review, debunks the notion that there’s some sort of special tax favoritism for buybacks.
Marco Rubio’s plan to tax stock buybacks in the hopes of spurring investment…is heavily flawed for multiple reasons. …the senator seems to be operating under the incorrect belief that buybacks are tax-advantaged, when in fact buybacks are already taxed in the form of capital-gains taxes. Since 2003, when the dividend-tax rate was lowered to remove the tax advantage then afforded buybacks, the tax rates on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains have been the same.
…let’s take a hypothetical example: Say an investor bought a stock at $100 and over the period of a year, the stock price appreciated by 10 percent to $110 after the company increased its profits and paid corporate taxes (at today’s 21 percent rate) on its earnings. If the company pays a $2 dividend at the end of the year and the investor sells the stock at $108 (ex-dividend), the investor pays the 23.8 percent dividend tax on the $2 dividend received and 23.8 percent on the $8 capital gain. If the company buys back some of its stock at $110 instead of paying a dividend and the investor sells his shares at $110, the investor pays the long-term capital-gains tax of 23.8 percent on the $10 he made. …Now, let’s imagine that Senator Rubio’s legislation is passed and a tax on buybacks goes into effect. …A transaction that was previously subject to two layers of taxation (corporate and capital-gains taxes) is suddenly subject to three layers of taxation (corporate taxes, capital-gains taxes, and buyback taxes), yielding a higher overall tax bill.
Ted Frank, writing for the Washington Examiner, adds further analysis.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, proposed banning buybacks as one of a series of conditions of government relief. Anyone making blanket condemnations of stock buybacks is either confused or otherwise fundamentally unserious — and proposing counterproductive policies that will slow the recovery.
…It’s economically indistinguishable from a special dividend, where a corporation pays out money to every shareholder, except it permits shareholders to elect their own tax consequences, unlike a dividend that creates a tax event immediately. …Proposals to ban buybacks are effectively proposals to demand corporations hold such huge stockpiles of cash, depriving shareholders of investment choices. Such proposals will backfire by slowing down the economic recovery when money that could be invested is instead held in corporate bank accounts, doing nothing.
I want to close by sharing two additional columns that argue against restrictions on stock buybacks, but also suggest that there may be some desirable reforms that might – as a side effect – lead to fewer buybacks.
Clifford Asness recently opined for the Wall Street Journal about buybacks and investment, echoing many of the points included in the above excerpts.
Share buybacks are when a company purchases its own common shares on the open market. After a buyback, a company is left with less cash and fewer shares outstanding. Buybacks, along with ordinary dividends, are one of the main ways companies return cash to investors—the ultimate objective of any investment.
So why have buybacks become the subject of vitriolic criticism? …The lead accusation against buybacks is that they “starve investment.” …Related to the claims of starving investment, some argue that today’s buybacks are a form of “self-liquidation” in which companies are systematically shrinking away. This ignores that…the net cash outflow from share buybacks has been more than replaced by cash inflow due to new borrowing (think of this as a debt-for-equity swap). Despite buybacks, on net companies have been raising money, not liquidating. …Buybacks…facilitate a movement of capital from companies that don’t need it to those that do. That’s how markets are supposed to work.
But he then notes that the tax code’s bias for debt could be a problem.
…there are some possible problems with buybacks. If taken to excess far beyond today’s levels and financed with debt, they could lead to too much leverage.
Noah Smith explains for Bloomberg that banning stock buybacks is the wrong response to the wrong question.
Stock buybacks are a fraught and confusing issue. …A number of politicians have decried this practice, and sought restrictions or a ban.
…Many observers are mystified by this animosity. …share repurchases are like dividends — a way to return money to shareholders. When companies don’t have any way to invest their money profitably, they might as well give the money back to investors.
But he then suggests other government policy mistakes that could be artificially boosting the level of buybacks.
…many of the concerns people have with buybacks probably could be better addressed by reforming other parts of the corporate system. If executive short-termism is the problem, stock- and option-based compensation should be discouraged. If debt is the problem, tax corporate borrowing more heavily. …instead of attacking buybacks, reformers should focus on fixing other parts of corporate America.
Since I just wrote about the tax code being biased in favor of debt, I obviously am very sympathetic to tax reforms that would put debt and equity on a level-playing field.
Noah Smith raised the issue of whether stock- and option-based compensation arrangements for company executives are artificially encouraging buybacks.
Well, my modest contribution to this discussion is to explain that such compensation packages became more prevalent after Bill Clinton’s failed 1993 tax hike imposed a significant indirect tax increase on corporate salaries of more than $1 million. That tax hike, however, did not apply to performance-based compensation,
such as measures tied to a stock’s performance.
So what we’re really looking at are a couple of example’s of Mitchell’s Law in action.
Politicians adopt bad policies (favoritism for debt in the tax code and higher taxes on regular salaries), which lead to unintended consequences (more stock buybacks), which then gives politicians an excuse to further expand the size and scope of the federal government (restrictions and bans on buybacks).
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Image credit: Vinícius Pimenta | Pexels License.
