Law Commons^™

Supercharged Ipo's And The Up-C, Gladriel Shobe

University of Colorado Law Review

The "supercharged IPO," a new and increasingly popular financial transaction, has fundamentally changed the nature of IPOs for many companies. Traditionally, an IPO was a tax nonevent for the company and the owners, meaning it created no tax liability for either. Through creative but questionable tax planning, companies have found a way to do better than this by effectively generating a negative tax liability for the company and its owners. These transactions have received substantial attention from practicing lawyers, investment bankers, and journalists, and even briefly caught the attention of Congress, yet they have attracted surprisingly little scrutiny from scholars. …