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The NYT piece seems to be a great example of factual statements not telling the full story. I'm a NYT subscriber and value their reporting, but I think they fel

The NYT piece seems to be a great example of factual statements not telling the full story. I'm a NYT subscriber and value their reporting, but I think they fell short here. It's easy to get a sense from the article that tax reform simply saved FedEx about $1.5 billion (the amount they owed the previous year). But it's more complicated than that. Yes, tax reform helped FedEx lower their tax bill. But a huge chunk of that was due to temporary behavior changes FedEx made in response to the bill - not a permanent reduction in how much they will owe each year. One of the ways they saved a lot of money was investing a lot into assets for which they could deduct 100% of future depreciation immediately. This is a temporary part of tax reform. They would have been able to deduct that value eventually anyway, just over a long period of time.

jmull 7y ago
The information you're using to show the article doesn't tell the full story is in the article.
- dabernathy89 7y ago
  They could go into a lot more detail about exactly which provisions of tax reform helped FedEx, and how. They did not explain the 100% deduction for asset depreciation, or the fact that it's only a temporary provision of the law. They merely included a brief statement from FedEx referencing this provision in sort of generic terms. They also mentioned very briefly that a large part of the reduced tax bill was FedEx's pension contribution, but didn't provide any additional details about how tax reform encouraged this behavior. They also include misleading statements like this: > “Something like $1.5 billion in future taxes that they had promised to pay, just vanished,” said Matthew Gardner, an analyst at the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. The idea that FedEx had "promised" to pay that money is just ridiculous.
mlyle 7y ago
> One of the ways they saved a lot of money was investing a lot into assets for which they could deduct 100% of future depreciation immediately. Yup, which also means subsequent year taxes will be higher, because the assets are fully tax depreciated.

jmull 7y ago

The information you're using to show the article doesn't tell the full story is in the article.

dabernathy89 7y ago
They could go into a lot more detail about exactly which provisions of tax reform helped FedEx, and how. They did not explain the 100% deduction for asset depreciation, or the fact that it's only a temporary provision of the law. They merely included a brief statement from FedEx referencing this provision in sort of generic terms. They also mentioned very briefly that a large part of the reduced tax bill was FedEx's pension contribution, but didn't provide any additional details about how tax reform encouraged this behavior. They also include misleading statements like this: > “Something like $1.5 billion in future taxes that they had promised to pay, just vanished,” said Matthew Gardner, an analyst at the liberal Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. The idea that FedEx had "promised" to pay that money is just ridiculous.

mlyle 7y ago

> One of the ways they saved a lot of money was investing a lot into assets for which they could deduct 100% of future depreciation immediately. Yup, which also means subsequent year taxes will be higher, because the assets are fully tax depreciated.