Subject: Re: Dividends
Do you want the numbers? Not that they would ever change your mind--the heart wants what the heart wants--but I'm happy to provide them.
...
to claim you can prove that [...] is insulting to those companies.


As predicted, evidence will never change your mind : )

But there are other readers who might be interested.

As it turns out, the arithmetic is simple and pretty conclusive.

You do have to make some assumptions about personal income taxes on dividends and capital gains and on whether the P/B in the market would have changed due to a very small change in cash-to-ops ratio, but interestingly, it doesn't really matter what numbers you pick, you always get the same result. Even counting paying today the till-now-deferred capital gains tax on an unsold Berkshire share, with typical assumptions a person would be about 4.3% poorer today if Berkshire had paid a gradually increasing dividend in the last 20 years that averaged a 1% yield. That of course counts the after-tax cash you'd have received from the coupons.

If you don't count the ultimate cap gains tax on the shares, because of step-up or whatever, the gap is about 7.1% poorer.

Jim