[alasdair_]

Dividends are charged at 0%, 15% or 20% depending on capital gains tax brackets. (https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/taxes/dividend-tax-rate/)

The reason that stock repurchases are better than dividends for most tax purposes is that the owner can elect to sell or not sell their stock rather than rely on the forced timing of a dividend.

[vearwhershuh]

I wasn't clear: they should be tax advantaged, particularly for companies, relative to capital gains. If you tax capital gains at the marginal tax rate + 10%, they are unattractive in relative terms in most cases, even when deferred. And then letting companies deduct them against their profits encourages the companies to pay out profits (and to attempt to be profitable.)

[alasdair_]

I wasn’t sure if you were aware of this already or not but capital gains are not taxed at a marginal tax rate plus anything, they are taxed at 0%, 15% or 20%.

However, it’s worth noting that in terms of market volume, most entities that buy shares (like pension funds) don’t pay any taxes on their dividends or stock sales, so your scheme won’t make dividends attractive to these entities and indeed would likely raise the price, making them even less interesting to those entities.

This is why pension funds don’t buy (many) munis or TIPS etc. - they gain nothing from the tax advantages.