📅 On This Day
Apple's iPhone 6 Moment Fueled Years of Dividend Growth
On September 9, 2014, Apple took the stage to unveil the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch — its first new product category since the iPad. The large-screen phones answered Samsung directly and triggered a massive upgrade cycle, generating record cash flows. Apple, already a dividend payer since 2012, channeled that windfall into years of consecutive dividend increases and what became the largest share-buyback program in corporate history.
One keynote, two phones, and a watch quietly set the stage for one of history's great capital-return stories.
AAPL — Apple Inc.
🇺🇸 US
Source: Apple Inc.; The Verge
📅 On This Day
Apple's iPhone 6 Moment Fueled Years of Dividend Growth
On September 9, 2014, Apple took the stage to unveil the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, and the Apple Watch — its first new product category since the iPad. The large-screen phones answered Samsung directly and triggered a massive upgrade cycle, generating record cash flows. Apple, already a dividend payer since 2012, channeled that windfall into years of consecutive dividend increases and what became the largest share-buyback program in corporate history.
One keynote, two phones, and a watch quietly set the stage for one of history's great capital-return stories.
AAPL — Apple CDR (CAD Hedged)
🇺🇸 US
Source: Apple Inc.; The Verge
🌍 Around the World
Canada's Dividend Tax Rules Reward Locals — and Savvy Americans
Canada's 'gross-up and credit' mechanism makes Eligible Dividends from Canadian corporations particularly attractive for domestic investors holding shares in taxable accounts. Cross-border investors typically face a 25% withholding rate, reduced to 15% under most tax treaties. But US investors who hold Canadian dividend stocks inside an RRSP benefit from a lesser-known treaty provision: the Canada-US tax treaty recognizes the RRSP as a retirement account, bringing withholding all the way to 0% — a benefit unavailable even in a Roth IRA.
The right account structure can mean the difference between a 15% haircut and zero Canadian withholding on every dividend.
🇨🇦 CA
Source: Canada Revenue Agency; IRS Publication 597; Canada-US Tax Treaty
🔥 Dividend Streak
MSA Safety's 54-Year Dividend Streak Began With a Mine Disaster
After a 1912 West Virginia mine explosion killed more than 80 miners, two engineers turned to Thomas Edison for help — and together they produced an electric cap lamp to replace the open flames that had been triggering disasters. That invention cut mine deaths by roughly 75% over the next quarter century. Built on a mission to keep workers alive, MSA has since raised its dividend for 54 consecutive years, starting in 1972.
From Edison's workshop to a 54-year dividend streak — MSA Safety is proof that purpose-built companies endure.
MSA — MSA Safety
Source: MSA Safety — Our Heritage (us.msasafety.com)
🔥 Dividend Streak
MSA Safety's 54-Year Dividend Streak Began With a Mine Disaster
After a 1912 West Virginia mine explosion killed more than 80 miners, two engineers turned to Thomas Edison for help — and together they produced an electric cap lamp to replace the open flames that had been triggering disasters. That invention cut mine deaths by roughly 75% over the next quarter century. Built on a mission to keep workers alive, MSA has since raised its dividend for 54 consecutive years, starting in 1972.
From Edison's workshop to a 54-year dividend streak — MSA Safety is proof that purpose-built companies endure.
MSA — Mineros SA
Source: MSA Safety — Our Heritage (us.msasafety.com)
💡 Did You Know
FDR Once Tried to Tax Companies Into Paying Dividends
In 1936, President Roosevelt pushed through the Undistributed Profits Tax, a levy designed to force corporations to pay out earnings rather than hoard them. FDR originally proposed rates as high as 73.9%, though Congress enacted a graduated scale topping out at 27% — still punishing enough to reshape boardroom behavior. Corporate America fought back with accounting maneuvers, and the tax was watered down by 1938 and fully repealed by 1939, but it left a lasting mark: historians credit the episode as a key reason US companies later embraced share buybacks as a politically quieter way to return capital.
The ghost of FDR's 1936 tax experiment still haunts how American companies think about dividends versus buybacks.
Source: US Treasury historical tax records; Tax Foundation historical analysis