Jake Smith, 
PhD Candidate

Naveen Jindal School of Management | Finance
University of Texas at Dallas

I'm a Finance PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas. My research focuses on empirical corporate finance.

I received a Bachelor of Science in Finance summa cum laude from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee in 2013, and was awarded the distinction of Outstanding Senior in Finance. I then received a Master of Science in Finance from the University of South Florida in 2015.

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CV | Email | Google Scholar | SSRN

Tax Avoidance through Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions

with Jean-Marie Meier

Abstract

We investigate cross-border, tax-haven mergers and acquisitions (M&A) using hand-collected data on tax residence laws and a novel algorithm that derives the tax residence of any company. Tax havens have $2.4 trillion in M&A deal value beyond what is predicted based on economic fundamentals. Cross-border, tax-haven M&A results in $29.8 billion in tax avoidance annually, and cross-border, non-haven M&A results in an additional $34.1 billion in annual tax avoidance. While tax havens are known as custodians and intermediaries of assets, this is the first paper to document that havens affect the ultimate ownership of assets on a large scale.

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Conference Presentations

• China International Conference in Finance 2021, Shanghai (scheduled)

• International Trade and Finance Association 2021, online (scheduled)

• SFS Cavalcade 2021, online (scheduled)

• Midwest Finance Association 2021, online

• Journal of Law, Finance, and Accounting 2020, online

• European Economic Association 2020, online

• 10th EIASM Conference on Current Research in Taxation, online

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Poster Session

• American Economic Association 2021 Conference, online

The COVID-19 Bailouts

with Jean-Marie Meier

Abstract

We use hand-collected data to investigate the COVID-19 bailouts for all publicly listed US firms. The median tax rate is 4% for bailout firms and 16% for no-bailout firms. The bailouts are expensive when compared to past corporate income tax payments of the bailout firms. We compute the number of years a bailout recipient has to pay corporate income tax to generate as much tax revenue as it received in bailouts: 135.0 years for the Paycheck Protection Program and 267.9 years for the airline bailouts. We also document a dark side of the bailouts. For many firms, the bailouts appear to be a windfall. Numerous bailout recipients made risky financial decisions, so bailing them out might induce moral hazard. Moreover, lobbying expenditures positively predict the bailout likelihood and amount.