Recent Tax Legislation: A Review of Changes Relevant to Finance Research

Abstract

This article seeks to highlight significant U.S. federal income tax legislation in a manner that is useful to academics performing research in the field of finance. Taxes are a pervasive part of the current financial landscape, and as such it can be important for researchers to be aware of their implications, even for research not traditionally known as tax. It is our intention that this article serve as a convenient resource both to potential researchers who are curious about tax issues and to those whom taxes are merely of tangential interest. It is also our hope that this review will help to spark ideas that lead to creative new research.

We will proceed by reviewing relevant tax changes and discussing research settings where they might be especially important to consider. From this perspective, much of our discussion will be based on considerations for researchers utilizing time series or panel data, as opposed to cross-sectional. The analysis will cover the period of 1986 to the present.

JEL Classification: M41, M44, H25, G30