---
title: "Share buybacks under the excise tax (research idea)"
description: "Share repurchases appear on 28 recent papers in the finance journals, and only one of all 35 buyback papers carries a tax keyword. The US has taxed buybacks at 1% since 2023, and a higher rate has been proposed. Did the tax move payouts to dividends, and did it change investment?"
url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/buybacks-under-the-excise-tax
markdown_url: https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/buybacks-under-the-excise-tax.md
license: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)
date: "2026-10-23"
updated: "2026-10-23"
status: "seed"
tags: ["finance", "tax"]
keywords: ["share repurchases", "buybacks"]
---

# Share buybacks under the excise tax

Share repurchases appear on 28 recent papers in the finance journals, and only one of all 35 buyback papers carries a tax keyword. The US has taxed buybacks at 1% since 2023, and a higher rate has been proposed. Did the tax move payouts to dividends, and did it change investment?

## What prompted this

Since October 2025, 35 papers carry a share-repurchase or buyback keyword (29 in finance journals), with "share repurchases" on 28. Only one of them also carries a tax keyword. The literature on payout policy still mostly asks why firms buy back shares, not what a tax on it does.

## Questions

- After the 1% excise tax, did firms shift from buybacks to dividends, or did buybacks simply continue?
- Did firms with large buyback programmes invest or hire more, as supporters of the tax claimed?
- Do the responses predict what a 4% rate would do?

## Data that could help

Quarterly repurchase and dividend data (Compustat), announcement dates of buyback programmes, and firms' investment and employment.

## Next step

Compare buybacks and dividends of US firms before and after 2023 with those of Canadian firms, which faced a 2% tax from 2024, and with firms in countries without such a tax.

## Related research activity

*The keywords this note follows, in the tracked finance, accounting, economics, management, operations research and AI journals as of 2026-10-26*

| Keyword | Papers, last 30 days | Rank | Papers per month, Oct 23 – Oct 26* | Papers, last 36 months |
|---|---:|---:|---|---:|
| share repurchases | 1 | #2881 | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 1, 5, 1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 2, 4, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 2, 6, 0, 5, 4, 2, 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 3, 1, 1 | 68 |
| buybacks | 0 | – | 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0 | 7 |

## Cite this page

Scholar4AI. (2026). Share buybacks under the excise tax. Journal Research Rankings. Retrieved October 23, 2026, from https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/buybacks-under-the-excise-tax

```bibtex
@misc{scholar4ai-ideas-buybacks-under-the-excise-tax,
  author = {{Scholar4AI}},
  title = {Share buybacks under the excise tax},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://scholar4ai.com/ideas/buybacks-under-the-excise-tax}},
  urldate = {2026-10-23},
  note = {Journal Research Rankings; data from OpenAlex (CC0); licensed CC BY-NC 4.0}
}
```

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).