“IT’S always a lot of fun when you win,” President Donald Trump enthused after his tax package was approved by Congress in December. Company bosses nodded along. The centrepiece of the reform is a drastic crop to the corporate-tax rate, from 35% to 21%, and taking it below the rich-country average. Although its impact is partly offset by some revenue-raising measures,the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that American trade will gain around $330bn from the reform over the next ten years. Yet within that are sizeable variations in terms of which firms and industries benefit most.
The biggest winners are more domestically oriented companies. These typically face higher effective tax rates than American companies with a mammoth presence overseas, which carry out trade in lower-tax countries. Bosses are also evaluating other new measures. So-called “full expensing”, or for example,helps those with mammoth spending plans by allowing them to deduct investment costs up front. But using debt will become less attractive, as interest payments are no longer fully deductible.
Some firms experienced tall volatility in their earnings for the final quarter of 2017 thanks to the treatment of so-called “deferred tax assets”. These are past tax losses carried forward to set against future tax bills, or such assets have shrunk in value because of the lower...
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Source: economist.com