Stephanie Is the Sole Shareholder and President of Hawk Corporation

question 190

Essay

Stephanie is the sole shareholder and president of Hawk Corporation.She feels that she can justify at least a $220,000 bonus this year because of her performance.However,rather than a bonus in the form of a salary,she plans to have Hawk pay her a $220,000 dividend.Because Stephanie's marginal tax rate is 35%,she prefers to receive a dividend taxed at 15%.Her accountant,however,suggests a $310,000 bonus in lieu of the $220,000 dividend since Hawk Corporation is in the 34% tax bracket.Should Stephanie take the $220,000 dividend or the $310,000 bonus? Support your answer by computing the after-tax cost of the two alternatives to Hawk and to Stephanie.

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Definitions:

Northern States

Geographic region consisting of states located in the northern part of a country, often characterized by specific climatic, cultural, or political attributes.

Standard Deviation

A measure of the amount of variation or dispersion in a set of values, indicating how spread out the values are from the mean.

Variance

A measure of the spread between numbers in a dataset, expressing how much the numbers differ from the average value.

Significance Level

The probability of rejecting the null hypothesis in a statistical test when it is true, used as a threshold to gauge the strength of the evidence against the null hypothesis.