Am I corrrect that HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) had no taxable dividends in 2015?

Is there some reason to disbelieve the dividend history on their web site?

Which confirms only that the first HPE dividend was declared with a record date of 12/9/2015 and paid on 1/6/2016.

Implicit in the OP's question might be: in which year is that dividend taxable?

The answer might not be as cut-and-dried as one might think. According to one non-authoritative website [1], dividends for individual securities are taxable in the year they are __paid__, unlike dividends distributed by mutual funds, which are taxable on the __record_date__.

----- [1]

That doesn't apply here since HPE is a business corporation, not a mutual fund, but where'd that odd rule come from?

That comes from Internal Revenue Code Section 857(b)(9), which pertains to the REIT, which must distribute a certain large percentage of its income every year in order to qualify as a REIT. So, what is good for the goose (the REIT) is good for the gander (the shareholders).

Although the REIT I hold does not treat its dividend declared in December and payable in January in this manner on the 1099-DIV. As far as I can tell.

I suspect it's because the fund is simply distributing dividends that IT received from the underlying securities during the previous calendar year. Its delay in sending out the checks shouldn't change which year the income actually occurred in.