@mindthegaap
I work with the fine folks at @itep.org. State/fed tax policy, corporate tax, financial accounting, reverse engineering the perfect mapo tofu, go Washington Spirit. Glass half empty but trying to fill it.
The $700 million in cash-on-hand Yum had at the end of 2025 could never have produced the "Mountain Dew Baja Midnight Pie." Such a delicacy requires the hothouse treatment that only a federal subsidy can provide.
Hell, without feeding at the federal trough Taco Bell might not even have desserts!
Now that they've revealed their 2026 Taco Bell menu additions, I can see I was flat wrong. It's not just that the world is a better place for having the Creme Brulee Crunchwrap Slider: it's also crystal clear that unfettered market forces could never have created it. ktla.com/food/taco-be...
It's important to admit when you're wrong. And I was wrong to express skepticism about the Yum! corporation's use of $86 million in R&D tax breaks last year. At the time, I didn't appreciate just how innovative the fast-food giant could be with their new menu offerings.
itep.org/yum-brands-r...
The potentially good news is that if Seaboard is using those R&D dollars to find less utterly inhumane strategies for processing pork-- the main thing for which the company is known-- that's not the worst use of those dollars. They have a bad track record tho.
www.humaneworld.org/sites/defaul...
The company's federal income tax bill on that $56 million of US income? Zero. Same for its nationwide state income tax. This is mainly attributable to R&D: they saved $27 million in tax using the Trump administration's new R&D expensing provision, and $6M in R&D credits.
To save $38M using the Bahamas (which has no corporate income tax but did introduce a Pillar Two top-up tax last year, a US-based company must have at least 38/21%= $181 million in income there. That's three times the $56 million the company reported in U.S. income in 2025.
While the term "corporate welfare" has thankfully gone largely out of use, Seaboard's latest 10-K shows the company still ready to pack its bags at any time for tax breaks. Income tax reconciliation shows Seaboard saved $38M by booking income in the Bahamas last year.
www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...
The Seaboard Corporation became infamous in the '90s as an early example of "corporate welfare" run amok. While many have forgotten the scathing Bartlett & Steele coverage of their "dine and ditch" use of tax incentives, Seaboard is still up to the same old tricks.
time.com/archive/6734...
There's a whole rabbit hole one could go down looking at the "certificates of competency" the administration has promulgated for other positions, but I'm not going there except to note that they found a (quite competent)nominee for ambassador to Vietnam named McNamara.
www.state.gov/2025-certifi...
His nomination's been hung up for months. Unclear whether the sticking point is his utter lack of qualifications-- seriously, read the credentials-- or the January episode where he joked that Iceland would become the 52nd state and he would be its governor.
missouriindependent.com/briefs/misso...
For all those wondering "what ever happened to Billy Long, the shortest-lived IRS Commissioner in US history," he's now the unofficial ambassador to Iceland. Feels like there should be an "if you know what I mean" in there, but there is not. His official credentials:
www.state.gov/long-william...
Ugland House is the same building then-President Barack Obama referred to as "the biggest tax scam on record" as a candidate. A 2008 GAO report found that over 18,000 business entities appeared to be based in that one building.
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/b...
Unlike Halliburton, Wynn is willing to admit to its shareholders that it has a subsidiary there: WM Cayman Holdings Limited I. The mailing address for this entity is Ugland House in George Town, the Cayman capital. www.google.com/maps/place/U...
Ametek also says that it *reduced* its taxes by $36 million due to "treaty exempt earnings" in Luxembourg last year. But we can't know whether the treaty meant a full or partial exemption from tax, and it's not 100% clear what the baseline tax rate used for Lux is. This is smoke but not fire.
The US-based instrument maker Ametek, for example discloses paying $17.3 million in Pillar Two taxes to Luxembourg last year. Since this is a 15% tax, this must mean the company booked at least $115 million in this known tax haven last year. Could be more, can't be less.
www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...
A short ITEP brief talks about how the new FASB tax disclosures can shed some light on the amount of income US multinationals are booking in tax havens. This one focuses on Halliburton because the math is really simple. But there are cases where it's more complex. (1/2)
itep.org/new-income-t...
Hopefully the AI bots that just replaced half of Block's workforce can be programmed to enjoy Dorsey's next house party....
Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, the guys who wrote up the 10-Q description discreetly chose not to reveal exactly how much the aforementioned company party cost. Other sleuths have estimated it was a $68 million party tho.
sherwood.news/markets/bloc...
Good news for Block CEO Jack Dorsey: the next raging office party he throws won't cost so much. The company's 3rd-quarter report cites a single company event as the main reason why Block's "facilities and other expenses" grew so much.
d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-00015126...
The company racked up half a billion in tax breaks using the research expensing provision enacted by the GOP Congress at President Trump's behest last summer. That alone was sufficient to wipe out the nearly $350 million tax bill Block should have paid to the federal gov't on last year's earnings.
The electronic payments company Block, best known for its Square credit card processing software, avoided paying even a dime of federal income tax on $1.5 billion of U.S. income last year. Yes, this is the same Block that just laid off half its workforce.
www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Arch...
Check out @itep.org 's running tally of 2025 corporate income tax disclosures here:
itep.org/corporate-ta...
For DC residents wondering why their electric bills are so high this winter, it's not because of taxes. PEPCO's parent company, Exelon, made $3.3 billion of pretax profits last year and paid a federal tax rate of just 3.6 percent.
51st.news/dc-pepco-bil...
6-12 months? That's older than parts of Larry Ellison.
Hard to look at the steady stream of 162(m) disclosures and not conclude that if the goal of the $1M cap was to stop companies from doling out lavish pay packages, it's not succeeding.
Of course, 162(m) was enacted in a 1993 law designed to reduce the deficit, so from that view it's doing great.
A fair # of companies disclose taking a tax hit under 162(m) in their 10-K income tax reconciliation. But it tends to be something u only see with smaller companies: for the big guys the tax hit generally falls under the significance threshold that mandates disclosure. Hidden among the tall trees.
The 162(m) $1 million cap on deductible executive pay was created in '93. Has been strengthened a few times since then, including (oddly) both the 2017 and 2025 Trump tax cuts. GOP leaders were looking for change under the cushions to fuel their tax-cutting coke habit both times & there was 162(m)!
Vistra was created after Energy Future Holdings went bankrupt a decade ago. Seems likely that the source of this tax hit is the options package going to its CEO.
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...
Vistra Energy 10-K reports taking a $75 M tax hike last year from the $1 million cap on deductible executive pay. Biggest I can remember seeing. At 21% tax rate that means the five top-paid execs (plus potentially a couple of legacy execs) were paid at least $350 million *over* the $1 million cap.
APA says it got a $72 million tax break from the September 2025 CAMT regs put out by Trump's Treasury.
Which means the new CAMT regulations reduced the company's income taxes far more than the OBBBA.
That's not how the legislative process is supposed to work.