Capital Dividend Account - CDA

A special corporate tax account which gives shareholders designated capital dividends, tax-free. This account is not recorded in the corporation's taxable accounting entries or financial statements. For this type of account, capital dividend is taken out from paid-in capital and not from retained earnings. As long as the company has this account, they can designate an appropriate amount of dividends as a capital dividend.

When capital dividends are paid out to shareholders, these are not taxable. The Capital Dividend Account is part of a tax provision whose goal it is to enable tax-free money received by a company, to then be given to its shareholders, tax free. Therefore, shareholders are not required to pay taxes on these distributions.