Cost of capital and valuation in the public and private sectors: tax, risk, and debt capacity

Brealey, R A, Cooper, I A and Habib, M A (2020) Cost of capital and valuation in the public and private sectors: tax, risk, and debt capacity. Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, 47 (1-2). pp. 163-187. ISSN 0306-686X OPEN ACCESS

Abstract

Cost of capital and valuation differ in the private and public sectors, because taxes are a cost to the private sector but are only a transfer to the private sector. We show how to transform the after-tax private sector cost of capital into its pre-tax equivalent, for comparison with the public sector cost of capital. We establish the existence of a tax induced wedge between these two costs of capital. The wedge introduces a preference on the part of the private sector for assets with rapid tax depreciation, high debt capacity, and low risk. We show that, in circumstances where an asset has identical public and private sector valuation in the absence of taxes, the tax induced difference in valuation is identical to the change in government tax receipts that results from having the asset owned by the private rather than the public sector. We provide some examples of distortions that result from failure to adjust for changes in tax revenues, and show how to effect such adjustment.

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Item Type: Article
Subject Areas: Finance
Additional Information:

© 2019 Wiley. This is the peer reviewed accepted version of the following article: Brealey R A; Cooper, I A and Habib, M A (2019) Cost of capital and valuation in the public and private sectors: tax, risk, and debt capacity, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, which has been published in final format at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jbfa.12413. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.

Date Deposited: 18 Oct 2019 10:09
Date of first compliant deposit: 16 Oct 2019
Subjects: Outsourcing
Debts
Depreciation
Regulations
Risk
Last Modified: 30 Sep 2023 00:38
URI: https://lbsresearch.london.edu/id/eprint/1236
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