Dividends: Some Basic Concepts

What are Dividends? Dividends are the portion of the benefit to a corporation that is distributed among the members thereof.

Who is entitled to receive dividends from a company? Any person holding shares in a company the day before the dividend payment will be entitled to. Words, if Company X pays dividends on 15 of the current month is sufficient to hold shares of the company at the close of the session on day 14.

When dividends are distributed? There is no schedule, the date and amount of the dividend is decided at the General Meeting of Shareholders of each company, ie the partners themselves are the ones who decide when the dividend is paid. However, listed companies tend to follow certain dates and frequencies, but these are not guaranteed in any case. There are companies that do not distribute dividends, others do it once a year and several other times, such as quarterly.

What types of dividends are there? There are two types of dividends:

Ordinary, which relate to the benefits of exercise and is expressed as "dividend year X". Extraordinary, which have no relation to the accounts but with some extraordinary event, such as the sale of shares any subsidiary company. How are dividends paid?

Cash: entry into the bank account accionista.En shares: the shareholder receives new shares of the assets compañía.En: they are unusual and consist of the division of assets owned by the company to its shareholders. How dividends are taxed? The income or income from capital to capital dry, are controlled so that up to 6,000 euros the gains are taxed at 19% and from that amount the percentage rises to 21%. Dividends are an exception to this rule. The taxation of dividends differs to promote long-term investment of the taxpayer and, above all, first to small investors. Thus, the capital raised via dividends is exempt from taxation up to 1,500 euros. Those who exceed that amount if it must pay taxes the profits through dividends as margins discussed above. In addition, this exemption does not operate or for collective investment companies or for dividends on shares acquired within two months prior to the payment of dividends if the two months after such shares are sold.

You can view a history of dividends for several indexes on http://www.eurodividendo.com/