Saturday, January 27, 2018

JPMorgan Chase (JPM): Its Tax Disclosure in Its 4Q 2017 Earnings Release Has Some Holes in It ...................................................................................... First, a Small-Holed, Very Simple One: Why Does the Top Earnings Release Say That the Impact of the Trump Tax Bill on 4Q 2017 Earnings Was $2.4 Bil, While the Detailed Consolidated Income Statement in the Financial Supplement Say It Was $1.9 Bil? ...................................................................................... Second, the Crater, the More Complex and Salient Question: Why Didn't JPMorgan Chase Disclose the Components and Their Individual Amounts of Its $2.4 Bil or $1.9 Bil Total Impact of the Trump Tax Bill on Its 4Q 2017 Earnings? ...................................................................................... There Have To Be a Handful of Items Making Up This $2.4 Bil or $1.9 Bil: Why? Because Other Multi-National Corps Have Disclosed a Similar Handful of Them ...................................................................................... Perhaps the Amounts Were Immaterial? Well, Let's Test That Assertion ...................................................................................... JPM's Top Earnings Release Says That the Impact of the Trump Tax Bill on Its 4Q 2017 Earnings Was $2.4 Bil, Which Is 57% of Its 4Q 2017 Bottom Line Earnings: Yeah, 57% of Earnings Is Material ...................................................................................... But It's Much Bigger Than That: One of the Components Has To Be the Tax Cost of the Mandatory Deemed Dividend From The Repatriation of Its Foreign Undistributed Earnings ...................................................................................... In its Income Tax Footnote Included in Its 2016 Annual Report Filing, the Cumulative Undistributed Foreign Earnings Were a Massive $38.4 Bil at December 31, 2016. A Year Earlier, It Was $34.6 Bil. Thus Around the End of 2017, It Had To Be Around $42 Bil. There is No Way the Tax Cost of $42 Bil of Foreign Earnings Have a Cost of $2.4 Bil. From Other Multi-National Corps Which Have Disclosed Theirs, JPM's Tax Cost Would Probably Be At Least Double That $2.4 Bil, Which Is Higher Than Its 4Q 2017 Bottom Line Earnings. Thus There Had To Be One or More Tax Components Going the Other Way and Having a Positive Effect on the Computation of the Trump Tax Bill's Impact on JPM's 4Q 2017 Earnings. ...................................................................................... It Would Be Very Simple To Solve the Confusion That JPM Actual and Potential Investors Have: JPM Should Be Transparent and Disclose All of the Tax Components And Their Amounts of the Trump Tax Bill's Impact on JPM's 4Q 2017 Earnings