Thursday, May 17, 2018

Loyal readers of the Calcbench blog know that we follow corporate tax disclosures closely — you know, with tax reform being the biggest financial reporting issue of 2018 and all. We have a few research projects in the works related to tax disclosures, and you can expect much more coverage in months to come.

Meanwhile, for those just joining the Calcbench fan base, here’s a recap of our tax reform posts since the start of 2018.

Jan. 23: Tax Reform Disclosures: Five Easy Examples. Tax reform was signed into law on Dec. 22, 2017, and the disclosures started almost immediately. This post has examples from CHS Inc., Amcon Distributing, Nike, and others.

Feb. 8: Wha? One-Time Taxes and Effective Tax Rates. We soon noticed that thanks to the one-time deemed repatriation tax, companies were reporting effective rates higher than the statutory rate of 35 percent.

Feb. 15: Tax Reform Disclosures: Getting Started. As the disclosures started to pour in, we cooked up this primer about how to use Calcbench to find said disclosures, even if companies are tagging them in hard-to-find ways..

Feb. 20: Deferred Tax Assets and Tax Reform. Much of the change in corporate income, at least in this first year, is due to companies reassessing the value of deferred tax assets and liabilities. That’s such a complex subject we cooked up a Q&A on just that alone.

March 14: A Qwest for Insight on Effective Tax Rates. Thank you to Qwest for its 2017 filing, which gives us a fascinating example of how tax reform can goose a company’s 2017 operating income even as revenues decline.

April 11: Tax Reform Totals Among Big Filers. Our first actual study of 2017 tax reform disclosures! We studied the reconciliations of 95 large companies, which collectively expect to pay $40.3 billion less in taxes even as the average payment goes up.

April 26: Kraft-Heinz’s Crazy Tax Rate. Another thank you to Kraft-Heinz, first for its superior amount of detailed disclosure (more than 1,600 words); and also for showing us how a filer can report an effective tax rate of almost 100 negative percent.

May 4: Tax Reform: Who’s Up, Who’s Down, in Relative Terms. Another study, this time reviewing the disclosures of more than 120 firms that reconciled in percentage times— showing us that Kraft and its -98.7 percent effective rate ain’t even close to the craziest one out there.

If you have suggestions for what else we should examine, of course drop us a line at info@calcbench.com. Otherwise, stay tuned here for more analysis from now until Dec. 31!

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