A few years ago, I wrote about the American Jobs Creation Act (here and here), a bill passed in 2004 that permitted U.S. companies to repatriate overseas funds at a reduced tax rate (essentially 5.25%). It was a one-time act, and made some sense, given that the U.S. has one of the largest corporate tax rates in the world (essentially 35%). The joke I discovered about “jobs creation” was that, in the pharma business, this act overlapped with the onset of massive layoffs in this industry.
Today, the NYTimes writes about the bill, how the amount of money that came back to the U.S. was 50% higher than government estimates ($312 billion to $200 billion), and how the tax revenues generated were six times higher than a congressional committee anticipated ($18 billion to $2.6 billion). It’s great that tax revenues got a big boost, but the it looks like the biggest “creation” was in the creative accounting department.
Companies were told by the government that the repatriated funds had to be dedicated to R&D, employment, and other “jobs creation”-y domestic investments. Of course, there was no provision stating that funds previously allocated to those needs couldn’t be shifted away to other activities.
“It basically worked out to be one big giveaway,” said Robert Willens, a tax and accounting authority in New York. “The law never took into account the fact that money is fungible.”
Mr. Willens said while companies did make investments in their domestic operations, the repatriated money also freed up a corresponding amount of cash to pay out to shareholders or buy back stock — moves that do not generate job growth or investments. “We know that a lot of stock was retired during this time,” he said.
While you read all about it, I’ll get back to last year’s financials and letcha know what neat accounting tricks I come across.