The 1% Stock-Buyback Tax Hasn't Slowed Repurchases. A Proposed 4% Tax Might.

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : The 1% tax -- which was a last-minute addition to the climate, health and tax law passed last year -- is levied on net buybacks, meaning total shares repurchased minus new shares issued during the year.
51% : The tax has been projected to raise $74 billion over a decade by the Joint Committee on Taxation, and would have raised roughly $8.4 billion from S&P 500 companies had it been in effect in 2021.
51% : In the fourth quarter, S&P 500 companies spent about $189 billion on stock buybacks, up 2% from the third quarter and down 18.2% from a year earlier, according to preliminary data from S&P Dow Jones Indices, a unit of ratings firm S&P Global Inc. Companies in the index would have paid a combined roughly $2 billion in taxes for the quarter and lost about 0.48% in operating income had the levy been in effect in the fourth quarter, according to Howard Silverblatt, a senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
46% : At 2%, companies would have paid around $3.4 billion in taxes in the fourth quarter, he said.
43% : "If excise taxes on buybacks increase, our approach will generally not change, though we would require even lower market prices to execute stock repurchases."

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