Research of influences of taxation on organizational form

自2005年以来，日本引进了多种经营实体的组织形式。投资者在选择一种法律的企业组织形式时，应考虑哪种法律的组织形式能使投资者的税后现金流最大化。从税收角度来看，企业的法律的组织形式可分为四类：直接对投资者征收的通行证组织，投资者对应收股息纳税的股息减免组织，投资者为应收股息和公司缴纳税款的组织。本文比较了这几种组织形式的税后现金流量，结果表明，直接强加于投资者的通行型组织，如合伙制，并不总是具有税收优势。税后现金流受两个因素的影响：投资者是否以股息或资本利得的形式获得实体的收入，以及投资者持有股权的时间。当投资者以资本利得的形式获得实体收入时，直接施加给投资者的通行组织的税收优势会降低，因为通常资本利得的税率低于股息的税率。只要投资者持有股权，公司的税收优势就越大，因为投资者可以在投资者层面上获得递延所得税的好处。例如，在日本现行税率下，当投资者持有股票的时间超过30年，股息率为1%时，公司形式比合伙形式具有更大的税收优惠。这些结果意味着，我们不仅要考虑公司形式，而且要考虑投资期限、从实体到投资者的转让方式以及其他非税收因素，如公司治理的灵活性，从实体的目的来看，投资者的负债、融资成本等。

Since 2005, many kinds of organizational forms of business entities have been introduced in Japan. It should be considered which legal organizational form maximizes after-tax cash flow for the investors when the investors choose a legal form of a business entity.The legal organizational forms of business entities can be classified into four categories from the view point of taxation: pass-thorough organization immediately imposed on investors, dividend-deductible organization where the investors pay taxes on dividends receivable, pass-thorough organization where the investors pay taxes on dividends receivable, and corporation. I compare the after-tax cash flow among these organizational forms.The results show that pass-thorough organizations immediately imposed on investors, partnerships for example, do not always have advantage of taxation. The after-tax cash flow is influenced by two factors: whether the investors get income of the entity as dividends or as capital gains, and how long the investors hold the equities. When investors get income of entity as capital gains, the tax advantage of pass-thorough organizations immediately imposed on investors get lower because in usual tax rate of capital gains is lower than tax rate applied to dividends. As long the investors hold the equities, the more the tax advantage of corporation because the investors can get the benefit of deferred tax at investor-level. For example, the corporation form is more tax advantageous than partnership form when investors hold the equities for longer than thirty years with dividend yield of 1% under current tax rate schedules in Japan.These results implies that we should consider not only pass-thorough or corporation forms but also term of investment, kinds of transfer from entity to investor, and other non-tax factors, such as flexibility of corporate governance, liabilities of investors, financing costs, and etc from the view point of the purposes of entity.