tax burdens

[Brad De Long]

Share buybacks and dividends are both ways of getting money out of the
corporation into the hands of shareholders. The IRS takes a much smaller
cut of the first than of the second--which leaves economists puzzled about
why corporations ever do the second, because the first (taking the money
you would have spent on dividends and using it to buy back shares) seems to
be a cheap and easy way to expropriate part of the IRS's share of the
corporation.

Brad DeLong