Category Archives: income tax rates

US corporate tax reform (iii)

November 23, 2016 By in Banks, deferred taxes, income tax rates, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

For years ago I wrote in detail about today’s topic, which is deferred taxes.

The basics:

–deferred taxes are an accounting device that reconciles the cheery face a company typically present to shareholders with the more down-at-the-heels look it gives the IRS, while accurately reporting to both parties the cash taxes paid

–look at the cash flow statement, which, as the name implies, shows the cash moving in and out of the company or in the income tax footnote to get the particulars for a firm you may be interested in.

accounting for a loss

The issue I’m concerned about in this post is what happens when a company makes a loss.

reporting to the IRS

The income statement  for the IRS looks like this:

pre-tax income (loss)      ($100)

income tax due                          0

after-tax income (loss)     ($100).

reporting to shareholders

Financial accounting books, in contrast, look like this:

pre-tax income (loss)         ($100)

deferred tax, at 35%                 $35

after-tax income (loss)        ($65).

what’s going on

The financial accounting idea, other than to cosmetically soften the blow of a loss, is that at some future date the company in question will again be making money.  If so, it will be able to use the loss being incurred now to offset otherwise taxable future income.  Financial accounting rules allow the company to take the future benefit today.

It’s important to note, however, that the deferred tax is an estimate of future tax relief, based on today’s tax rates.

why does this matter?

Profits add to shareholders’ equity; losses subtract from it.  Under the GAAP accounting used for reports to stockholders, a loss-making company only has to write down its shareholders’ equity (aka net worth, book value) by about two-thirds of the actual loss.  To the casual observer, and to the value investor using computer screening, it looks stronger than it probably should.

Financial stocks typically trade on price/book.  This is also the sector that took devastatingly large losses during the financial crisis (that they caused, I might add).

Suppose the corporate tax rate is reduced to 15%.

This diminishes the value of any tax loss carryforwards a firm may have.  It also may require a substantial writedown of book value, making that figure more accurate.  But the writedown may also underline that the stock isn’t as cheap as it appears.

 

US corporate income tax reform (ii)

November 22, 2016 By in deferred tax, income tax rates, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

To summarize yesterday’s post:

firms with taxable income

Lowering the corporate tax rate in the US, while eliminating special interest tax preferences/exemptions, will benefit companies that have a high current tax rate.  It will boost such a firm’s earnings by as much as 30%.

On the other hand, companies that have a low income tax rate will receive little or no benefit.  Continuing to spend resources on what are in effect tax shelters for themselves will make no sense.  To the extent that they are able to unwind these arrangements, they will benefit by doing so.  If, however, they are recipients of special interest tax reduction deals, they may be absolute losers, as well as relative ones, if/when these special preferences are eliminated.

The greatest uncertainty here is whether industries that are recipients of large tax breaks, like real estate and oil and gas, will have their special interest preferences eliminated.  This will be a key indicator of whether the “Drain the Swamp” rhetoric is more than an empty slogan.

firms with losses

This case is not as straightforward, thanks to wrinkles in the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles used by publicly traded companies in their reports to shareholders.

for the IRS

Let’s assume a firm makes a pre-tax loss in the current year.

 

The company has a limited ability to use this loss to offset taxes paid in past years ( it carries the loss back).  It restates its past returns and gets a refund.

If it still has a portion of the loss that can’t be used in this way, it carries the loss forward to potentially use to shield income in future years from tax.

If the corporate income tax rate drops from 35% to 15%, the amount of pre-tax income that can be sheltered from tax by loss carryforwards remains the same.  But the value of the carryforward is reduced by 60%.

for financial reporting

That’s tomorrow’s topic.

 

US corporate tax reform: stock market implications (i)

November 21, 2016 By in deferred taxes, income tax rates, Uncategorized Tags: , , Leave a comment

high US corporate taxes

The headline rate for US federal tax on corporate profits is 35%.  That’s higher than just about anyplace else on the planet and, in itself, a deterrent to business formation in the United States.  It’s also the reason for the big business of advising corporations on how to finesse the tax code that has sprung up over the past decade or so.  In addition, it’s also why tax havens such as Ireland, Switzerland, Hong Kong and assorted islands in the Atlantic Ocean have become so popular with Americans.

A generation ago, world stock markets paid particular attention the rate at which a given company paid corporate tax.  The assumption back then, which has turned out to be incorrect, was that a firm could only sustain a low tax rate for a limited period of time.  So no matter what the rate shown in the financial statements, professional securities analysts would “normalize” it  to the top marginal rate.  Portfolio managers wouldn’t pay a full price for a low tax payer, either.

Not so in today’s world.  As far as I can see, Wall Street has long since stopped believing that the “quality” of earnings taxed at below the statutory tax rate is less than those same earnings taxed at a higher one.

Trump’s proposed reform

Given that the Republican party controls both houses of Congress and the presidency, it seems to me that the corporate tax reform championed by Donald Trump has a good chance for becoming law.  This would mean that for a company having $100 in fully-taxed pretax US income, after-tax profit would rise from $65 to $85–a 30+% boost.

big stock market implications

A change like this would have enormous implications for US-traded stocks.  In particular:

–investor interest would rotate toward purely domestic companies.  This would favor mid- and small-caps over large, and dollar earners over multinationals.  I think this is already starting to happen

–to the degree that they could be, elaborate tax avoidance schemes that have become common for US firms will be unwound.  Tax havens will suffer.  On the other hand, profits from future earnings that would otherwise be held in tax-haven banks will begin to be repatriated to the US.  Trump is also proposing to allow money now “trapped” in tax havens to be brought back to the US on payment of a 10% income tax.

–tax inversions by US-based companies–that is, flight of high-rate US taxpayers to tax havens abroad (or, actually, just about anywhere else) will come to a halt.  Arguably, companies that have recently inverted may begin to trade at discounts to un-inverted peers

–the price US firms would be willing to pay for foreign companies using funds parked abroad should fall

–it’s possible that US investors will begin to become interested once again in the ins and outs of the tax line on the income statement.  That might mean that 1980-style quality-of-earnings differentials will be in vogue again

–there are also possible negative implications for firms that have substantial tax loss carryforwards or who benefit from the many industry-specific tax preferences of the current tax code.

 

More tomorrow.

publicly traded US companies have about $1 trillion in cash stashed abroad

April 23, 2014 By in Accounting, income tax rates Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

That’s the best number I could come up with–admittedly through a fast internet search.

It’s not the exact figure that I find interesting, though, but the motives companies have for doing so.  Three of them are well-known, two less so.

the well-known

–Multinational companies have operations in many countries.  It may be that much of their growth–and all of their possible acquisitions–will be outside the US.  It makes no sense to move money back to the US, pay 35¢ on the dollar in Federal income tax and then resending the net amount abroad to make a foreign acquisition.  A CEO might, and probably should, lose his job for allowing this to happen.  Also the official reason companies cite for not returning cash to the US is that the funds are permanently invested internationally.

–Versus other countries, the IRS is unusually harsh in the way it taxes earnings repatriated from abroad.  There has already been one discount deal, the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, offered by the IRS to allow corporates to repatriate cash without the stiff tax bill.  The terms were:  tax at 5.25%, but all money brought back had to be invested in hiring new workers or building new plant.

As it turns out, aggregate hiring and plant construction didn’t rise during the amnesty period, even though about $300 billion was repatriated, making the case for another HIA a bit shaky.  Nevertheless, the possibility of a new HIA is a powerful deterrent to repatriation.  Who wants to be that idiot who paid $3.5 billion on a $10 billion repatriation a month before HIA II is enacted?

–Big corporates can borrow a ton of money very cheaply in the US.  APPL did it last year, for example, and the company seems to be warming up for another tranche in the near future.

the other two

–Companies have found a workaround.  It doesn’t count as repatriation if you keep the money in the US for less than 90 days and don’t get money again from the same source for a certain amount of time.  So multinationals have created daisychains of intracorporate loans, whose effect is to keep cash permanently in the US.  The first loan comes, say, from Hong Kong.  Three months later, it is repaid with cash from, say, Ireland.  That loan is repaid with money from, say, Switzerland.  And the Swiss loan is repaid with fresh funds from Hong Kong…  Ingenious, yes, but most owners would wish, I think, that corporate minds be put to more productive uses.

–In recent years, companies have boosted eps growth by tax planning, that is, by opting to recognize profits in low-tax jurisdictions.  A generation ago, investors wouldn’t have allowed this.  The market back then would only pay a discount PE for earnings that weren’t fully taxed at the rate prevailing in the firm’s home country.

No longer.  As far as I can see, investors are now indifferent to the tax rate firms pay.  The market no longer discounts earnings taxed at a low rate.  So managements have every incentive to recognize profits in low-tax countries.  After all, it takes $1.50 in pre-tax earnings in the US to produce a dollar of net.  That’s 50% more than a US firm needs to produce the same net from Hong Kong.

More than that, suppose a firm suddenly got it into its head to recognize all its earnings in the US.  What would happen to profits?  There’s an easy way to find out.  Just look at the actual corporate tax rate and adjust it to 35%.  If the actual rate is 25%, then each dollar of pre-tax becomes 75¢ of net.  At 35%, each dollar of pre-tax would be 65¢ of net–a 14% drop.  What CEO wants to report that earnings growth is slowing–or worse, disappearing–because he’s monkeying around with the tax rate?