Wharton: Have Stock Buybacks Gone Too Far?

Fueled by the lower corporate tax rate, share buybacks among S&P 500 companies shot to a fourth consecutive record in the last quarter of 2018, according to Standard & Poor’s. What’s more is that the lower tax rate enabled dozens of profitable Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon and IBM to avoid paying federal taxes last year, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Tax cut proponents had argued that companies would have more money to reinvest in growth and expansion, and eventually benefits would flow to employees and the economy overall, but critics say those effects so far have been limited. Read more