• Journal of Industrial Convergence
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.23-46
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• 2004

Tax exhaustion effect hypothesis says that firms with low expected marginal tax rates on their interest deductions employ less debt in their capital structure. We use logit analysis to study how financing decision is related to tax after controlling non tax effects. We treat non debt tax shields as proxy of marginal corporate tax rates which affect the probability of using the deductibility of debt tax shields and empirically test the tax effect on financing decision in Korea. In conclusion, we provide evidence that debt financing is positively related to tax in the former sub-period. This results partially support for tax exhaustion effect hypothesis and low tax rate firms have lower debt levels than high tax rate firms.