A number of people have already pointed out that a corporate fiscal quarter doesn't necessarily align with the calendar year. There are assorted benefits to thi

A number of people have already pointed out that a corporate fiscal quarter doesn't necessarily align with the calendar year. There are assorted benefits to this, usually around the seasonality of income. Some companies with multiple sub-corporations may choose to have differing fiscal years for all the corporations which can somehow create a tax advantage (although beats me how that works). It's interesting to note also that there's a (smallish) tax disadvantage to not aligning with the calendar year in that typically tax brackets adjust upward from year to year and having a non-calendar fiscal year means that income might be taxed at a slightly higher rate since the tax rate is based on the year the fiscal calendar begins. At large corporation scale, this difference amounts to a rounding error.