Mark Hulbert: Biden’s 1% buyback tax isn’t damaging stock prices as critics feared

The 1% excise tax on corporate stock buybacks that took effect at the beginning of 2022 did not play a significant role in causing the bear market in U.S. stocks.

That’s the conclusion I reached from analyzing recently released data on buyback activity in 2022. At the level of precision that the data allow, the tax had little- to no noticeable impact on the level of the overall market.

This…