Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett seen at the annual Berkshire shareholder shopping day in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S., May 3, 2019.
Scott Morgan | Reuters
Researchers applied the Inflation Reduction Act’s new 15% corporate minimum tax onto 2021 company earnings and found that the burden would only be felt by about 78 companies, with Berkshire Hathaway and Amazon paying up the most.
The study from the University of North Carolina Tax Center used past securities filings to map the tax, which goes into effect in January, onto companies’ 2021 earnings.
The researchers found that the 15% minimum would have taken a total of $31.8 billion from 78 firms in 2021. Berkshire led the estimated payout with $8.33 billion, and Amazon follows behind with $2.77 billion owed based on its 2021 earnings.
The study notes the limitations of looking solely at public company data within a single year. The researchers recognized that these estimates may be subject to change, especially as company operations change under the tax in 2023.
President Joe Biden signed the minimum book tax into law, along with the rest of the Inflation Reduction Act, in August. The tax is specifically meant to target companies earning more than $1 billion per year.
The Joint Committee on Taxation had previously estimated that it would affect around 150 firms, with the costs falling specifically on the manufacturing industry. The bipartisan JCT also predicted $34 billion in revenue in the first year of the tax, slightly more than the theoretical 2021 revenue estimated at UNC.
According to the study, the next-highest taxes would be paid by Ford, AT&T, eBay and Moderna, all of which would owe more than $1.2 billion in payments based on their 2021 financials.
Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla on Saturday said that has tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time in less than two months.
Bourla, who heads the company that helped to create the widely used Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, said he was feeling well and symptom-free.
“I’ve not had the new bivalent booster yet, as I was following CDC guidelines to wait 3 months since my previous COVID case, which was back in mid-August,” Bourla said.
“While we’ve made great progress, the virus is still with us,” Bourla added.
Bourla previously announced on Aug. 14 that he tested positive for the virus and was experiencing mild symptoms.
PFIZER TO SUPPLY UP TO 6 MILLION COURSES OF COVID-19 TREATMENT FOR LOWER-INCOME COUNTRIES
NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 9: Albert Bourla attends The New York Times DealBook Online Summit on November 9, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Ryan Muir/Getty Images via The New York Times) (Ryan Muir/Getty Images via The New York Times / Getty Images)
Late last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it has authorized updated coronavirus booster shots targeting the highly-contagious omicron variant.
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“As we head into fall and begin to spend more time indoors, we strongly encourage anyone who is eligible to consider receiving a booster dose with a bivalent COVID-19 vaccine to provide better protection against currently circulating variants,” FDA Commissioner Robert Califf said in a statement at the time.
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The shots, which the FDA is referring to as “updated boosters,” contain “two messenger RNA (mRNA) components of SARS-CoV-2 virus, one of the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the other one in common between the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.”
A bid to sell a historic restaurant and mansion once owned by Colonel Sanders and his wife has struggled to take flight — partly because the deal is ruffling the feathers of KFC’s corporate owner, The Post has learned.
The Claudia Sanders Dinner House — a 63-year-old eatery in Shelbyville, Ky. that draws locals and tourists alike with its fried chicken, cole slaw and homemade pies — was put up for sale in June. Some interested buyers say they want to franchise it and expand its footprint outside the town for the first time.
But the prospect of a rival fried-chicken chain that uses the Sanders name has attracted the attention of KFC’s parent YUM! Brands, whose legal team promptly submitted a filing to the US Patent & Trademark Office days after the properties were put up for sale.
The former primary 5,000-square-foot residence of Colonel Harland Sanders located in Shelbyville, Ky.Andrew Kung Group
The filing seeks to reinforce protections of KFC trademarks, including “Colonel Sanders’ Original Recipe,” “Col. Harland Sanders” and “It’s Finger Lickin’ Good.”
“It’s a very unique situation,” said Jonathan Klunk of Six Degrees Real Estate, which has been hired to sell the properties. “We are selling Claudia and she doesn’t have as much name recognition as her husband, but a buyer can’t describe her without mentioning both her husband and KFC.”
Sanders lived out his final years at Blackwood Hall before his death in 1980 at the age of 94.
Col. Harland Sanders married Claudia in 1949 and opened the Claudia Sanders Dinner House for his wife in 1959 on a 3-acre property that also includes their 5,000-square-foot private residence known as Blackwood Hall. Sanders lived out his final years at Blackwood Hall before his death in 1980 at age 94. Claudia died in 1994 when she was 90.
The property has been in the hands of Sanders family friends Tommy and Cherry Settle since the 1970s. Cherry, who is 78, was a hostess at the restaurant when she and Tommy, now 80, bought the property from the Sanders. Tommy had run a plant that supplied the restaurant with hams. The couple run the restaurant and currently live in Blackwood Hall but want to retire.
YUM! did not respond to multiple calls and emails for comment, but KFC is famously secretive about its fried chicken recipe, Sanders’ original 11 spices and herbs. Klunk says there are “a lot of similarities” between the restaurants’ menus but that the Dinner House has “no connection to the KFC recipe.”
The Settles had a run-in with YUM! in 2001 when Tommy found a leather-bound datebook from 1964 in the basement of Blackwood Hall that belonged to Col. Sanders and contained a list of 11 herbs and spices. Settle wanted to authenticate the recipe so he could sell it, according to reports at the time, but YUM sued him to keep it private until the company could vet it. The lawsuit was dropped when YUM! claimed the recipe wasn’t even close to the original.
YUM!, a $6.5 billion conglomerate headquartered in Louisville, Ky. that also owns Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has not expressed an interest in buying the restaurant brand or property, Klunk said.
The Settles are seeking $9 million for their intellectual property as well as the two buildings, the three-acre lot and some memorabilia including the first KFC flag and bucket and a birthday letter to Sanders from President Richard Nixon. A 2013 auction of the Colonel’s memorabilia that included one of his white suits fetched $21,510 and his 1973 Kentucky driver’s license went for $1,912.
Six Degrees is now considering unbundling the estate, selling each piece separately to attract more buyers, Klunk said.
One of the dining rooms at Claudia Sanders Dinner House.Andrew Kung Group
So far, interested buyers include local and large restaurant groups, serial entrepreneurs who have global businesses and even some local bourbon brands, according to the real estate firm.
One potential buyer talked about turning the Colonel’s house into a high-end Airbnb rental, while a couple of Kentucky bourbon brands are weighing expansions into comfort food, Klunk said. Others are exploring licensing its popular dishes, especially its famous yeast rolls, for sale in supermarkets, Klunk said.
But none of the bidders are moving forward before talking to YUM! about what they can do with the brand without inviting litigation.
“If you want to use the Claudia Sanders brand you have to have a team of intellectual property lawyers,” Klunk tells potential buyers.
So far, interested buyers include local and large restaurant groups, serial entrepreneurs who have global businesses and even some local bourbon brands.Andrew Kung Group
The Claudia Sanders Dinner House has been a mainstay in Shelbyville, Ky. since 1959, even serving as the first KFC headquarters for a time. Its menu includes boxes of chicken wings, thighs, and tenders, yeast rolls, creamed spinach, cole slaw and homemade pies.
It’s one of the few establishments in the area that has a liquor license. Locals celebrate holidays, weddings and reunions at the grand, two-storied pavilion that features wide patios.
Even international tourists, especially from Japan – where KFC is a staple of Christmas dinners – have posted images of themselves roaming the vast parking lot between the dinner house and Blackwood Hall.
The restaurant has peacefully co-existed with the fast-food empire largely because the Sanders and Settles have never aggressively promoted the brand or touted it on social media.
That could change – but it won’t be easy to slap the Sanders name on other restaurants selling chicken, said Brad D. Rose, a trademark attorney at Pryor Cashman who isn’t involved in the case.
“Whoever is going to take on the Claudia Sanders name is probably in for an uphill and expensive battle,” Rose said.
Kyle McCann has always prided himself in his ability to make the best of any situation.
So when his boss fired him from the job he started just eight weeks earlier, McCann held back tears and decided to focus on the bright side.
McCann, then 26, joined VizyPay, a startup based in Waukee, Iowa, that designs payment technology solutions for small and mid-sized businesses across the U.S., as a sales account manager in June 2017.
He was the second employee hired at the startupand hit the ground running in his new role, signing several new accounts within his first two weeks on the job.
But then business slowed down — a lot. McCann went weeks without signing a new customer. “At first, I thought it was going to be the easiest job in the world, going to business owners and saying, ‘How can I save you money?'” he tells CNBC Make It. “I was terribly mistaken … I quickly realized I’m not much of a closer out on the field.”
So when Austin Mac Nab, the founder and CEO of VizyPay, texted him one Friday afternoon in late July to swing by his office, McCann knew he was toast. “I knew exactly what was coming, that I was getting fired,” he says. “But I decided to go into that meeting with a positive attitude and see what would happen.”
A ‘heat-of-the-moment decision’ that changed everything
McCann’s first thought walking into the meeting with his boss was how he was going to pay rent next month.
He and his girlfriend, Shannon, who was working a temp job at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, had just moved to an apartment in Waukee and “probably couldn’t afford the rent on her salary alone,” he says. “But I tried to remind myself that everything happens for a reason … I was definitely scared but tried not to worry too much.”
Even after Mac Nab told him he was getting fired, McCann remained calm and upbeat, thanking his boss for the opportunity, highlighting the positive elements of his experience at VizyPay and asking for feedback on his performance.
“He was very humble and didn’t give me a bunch of excuses as to why he failed,” Mac Nab says. “He held himself accountable to the fact that this job wasn’t for him, which not many people do, especially when they’re getting fired.”
Listening to McCann during the meeting, Mac Nab started to question his decision to let the recent hire leave the company altogether. “I felt he was genuine, authentic and hardworking, and my gut instinct kicked in during that conversation, it was a heat-of-the-moment decision,” Mac Nab says. “I thought, ‘I have to keep him someway, somehow at VizyPay, just not in this job.'”
So, after Mac Nab fired McCann from his role as an account manager, he offered him another job at the end of the meeting that he thought might be a better fit for McCann’s skills and friendly personality: How would he like to be a customer service representative instead?
The offer came with a lower salary than what he was making in his previous role, and would be just enough to cover his bills and groceries. McCann went home to talk it over with Shannon first and then accepted, to Mac Nab’s surprise.
“I had leads on other opportunities that paid more, but I saw something special in VizyPay,” McCann says. “I was eager to stay with the company because I truly believed in their vision and the people behind it.”
Kyle McCann, Shannon McCann, and Austin Mac Nab at VizyPay’s Iowa headquarters
Photo: Kyle McCann
Lessons learned
Fast forward five years and McCann, now 31, still works at VizyPay — he recently celebrated his one-year anniversary as the company’s director of operational strategy, and the company now has 91 employees. He and Shannon are married, and she recently took a job as VizyPay’s director of marketing and sales enablement.
McCann often reflects on the meeting where he was fired as a defining moment in his life that taught him “patience, the definition of grinding it out … and believing in not only ideas but yourself,” he says.
While you can’t always avoid getting fired, Mac Nab and McCann agree that there are a couple of things you should keep in mind during an exit meeting to leave on good terms:
Don’t be defensive: Ask for feedback and recognize where you could have improved in the role.
Keep your emotions in check: If you lose your cool, you could jeopardize a return offer, or your employer could be less amenable to negotiating your severance package or providing a reference for a different job.
Maintain an attitude of gratitude: Thank your employer for the opportunity and highlight some of the positive takeaways you have from the experience.
“You can’t control other people’s actions, but having a positive attitude and always being willing to put in the hard work can really open so many doors,” McCann says. “Getting that second chance and being able to prove what I can do … it’s been unreal and has led me to build a career that makes me really, really happy.”
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Central banks around the world are raising their key interest rates in the most widespread tightening of monetary policy on record. Some economists fear they may go too far if they don’t take into account their collective impact on global demand.
According to the World Bank, the number of rate increases announced by central banks around the world was the highest in July since records began in the early 1970s. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve delivered its third 0.75 percentage-point increase in as many meetings. This past week its counterparts in Indonesia, Norway, the Philippines, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and the U.K. also upped rates.
Moreover, the size of those rate rises is larger than usual. On Sept. 20, Sweden’s Riksbank increased its reference rate by a full percentage point. It hadn’t previously raised or lowered rates by more than half a point since adopting its current framework in July 2002.
Those central banks are almost universally responding to high inflation. Inflation across the Group of 20 leading economies was 9.2% in July, double the rate a year earlier, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Higher rates cool demand for goods and services and reassure households and businesses that inflation will be brought down over the coming year.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he anticipates that interest-rate increases will continue as the Fed fights high inflation. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
But some worry that central banks are effectively pursuing national responses to what is a global problem of excess demand and high prices. They warn that central banks as a group will thus go too far—and push the world economy into a downturn that is deeper than necessary.
“The present danger…is not so much that current and planned moves will fail eventually to quell inflation,”
Maurice Obstfeld,
formerly chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, wrote earlier this month in a note for the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where he is a senior fellow. “It is that they collectively go too far and drive the world economy into an unnecessarily harsh contraction.”
There are few signs that central banks are going to pause and take stock of the impact of their rate increases to date. The Fed indicated Wednesday it would likely raise rates 1 percentage point to 1.25 percentage points over its next two meetings. Economists at JPMorgan expect central bankers from Canada, Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Peru, the eurozone, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Romania, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, India, Malaysia and Thailand to raise rates in policy meetings scheduled through the end of October.
That is an array of central-bank firepower with few precedents. But do they all need to be doing so much if they are all doing the same thing?
Most economists accept that inflation in any one country isn’t solely due to forces within that country. Global demand also affects the prices of easily traded goods and services. This has long been apparent with commodities such as oil; a boom in China drove up prices in 2008 even as the U.S. slid into recession. It has also been true in recent years of manufactured goods, whose prices were boosted worldwide by disruptions to supply chains, such as at Asian ports, and elevated demand from government stimulus. One Fed study found that U.S. fiscal stimulus raised inflation in Canada and the U.K.
Sweden’s Riksbank, led by Gov. Stefan Ingves, raised its reference rate by a full percentage point this week.
Photo:
Mikael Sjoberg/Bloomberg News
But an individual central bank’s focusing on matching supply and demand at a national level could go too far, because other central banks are already weakening the global demand that is one of the drivers of national inflation. If each central bank does so, the excess tightening globally may be significant.
The World Bank shares Mr. Obstfeld’s worries, warning in a report that “the cumulative effects of international spillovers from the highly synchronous tightening of monetary and fiscal policies could cause more damage to growth than would be expected from a simple summing of the effects of the policy actions of individual countries.”
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That risk could be reduced through coordination between central banks—for example, when they cut key interest rates together during the global financial crisis. Likewise, in 1985 when advanced economies acted together to bring down the dollar and then again in 1987, when they acted together to support it.
Fed Chairman
Jerome Powell
noted Wednesday that central banks have coordinated interest-rate actions in the past, but that it wasn’t appropriate now when “we’re in very different situations.” He added that contact among global central banks is more or less ongoing. “And it’s not coordination, but there is a lot of information-sharing,” he said.
If coordination isn’t feasible, a more attainable goal may be, as the World Bank advised, for national policy makers to “take into account the potential spillovers of globally synchronous domestic policies.”
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said it wasn’t appropriate for central banks to coordinate interest-rate actions at the moment.
Photo:
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Mr. Powell suggested that already happens. The Fed’s forecasts always take account of “policy decisions—monetary policy and otherwise [and] the economic developments that are taking place in major economies that can have an effect on the U.S. economy,” he told reporters.
Many central banks are worried about raising rates too little in the face of stiff inflation. “In this environment, central banks need to act forcefully,” said
Isabel Schnabel,
a policy maker at the European Central Bank, in a late August speech. “Regaining and preserving trust requires us to bring inflation back to target quickly.”
“Informal coordination would be beneficial,” said
Philipp Heimberger,
an economist at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies. “Systematic thinking on the impact of interest-rate hikes would need to take into account what other central banks are doing simultaneously. This would be a game changer.”
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Mr. Heimberger said that the Fed has a key role as the prime mover behind the rise in global interest rates and that it should “seriously consider the implications of its interest-rate hiking cycle for other parts of the world.”
Gilles Moëc,
chief economist at insurer
AXA SA,
is doubtful that effective coordination is achievable and argues that in its absence, central banks should tread more carefully as they contemplate further rate rises.
“Once monetary policy is in restrictive territory, I think it becomes dangerous to hike mechanically at every policy meeting without taking the time to assess how the economy is responding,” Mr. Moëc said. “The quantity of new info between two meetings can be too small and the risk of overreaction rises.”
Higher interest rates mean a grimmer economic outlook and a further drag on the stock market.
Goldman Sachs lowered its 2022 projection for the S&P 500.
The firm says quality, short-duration stocks will outperform long-duration.
On Wednesday, the Federal Open Market Committee raised its key interest rate by 75 basis points for a third straight time.
Their decision lifted the fed funds rate to a range between 3% and 3.25%, the highest since early 2008. And, their median forecast is that this rate will be at 4.4% by the end of this year.
As the fight to squash inflation continues, Wall Street is coming to terms with what higher rates could bring besides less inflation: lower consumer demand that slows the economy, and weaker stock prices. On Friday, concerns about the Fed’s rate hikes pushed the S&P 500 towards its lows of the year.
A day earlier, Goldman Sachs equity strategists cut their year-end target for the index from 4,300, which it hit mid-August, to 3,600.
“The expected path of interest rates is now higher than we previously assumed, which tilts the distribution of equity market outcomes below our prior forecast,” strategists led by David Kostin said in a note.
One of those outcomes is a so-called hard landing in which higher rates trigger a recession. That scenario could see the S&P 500 plunge to 3,400 by year-end, and 3,150 by the end of the first quarter, Kostin said.
A low unemployment rate is signaling that consumer incomes and spending could increase by next year. This scenario would keep inflation elevated and lead the Fed to hike rates further than current projections, he said.
He added that based on the team’s conversations with clients, a majority of equity investors now believe a hard landing is inevitable. What’s still unclear is the timing, magnitude, and duration of a potential recession. Most portfolio managers estimate that a recession could hit the US economy sometime in 2023, according to Kostin.
His team now recommends defensive positioning in light of the unpredictability. Investors should focus on stocks that have strong balance sheets, high returns on capital, and stable sales growth.
Rising interest rates also mean short-duration stocks, those that generate a larger share of their cash flows in the near future, will outperform their long-duration peers, Kostin said. That’s because stocks with cash flows pegged to the distant future are more sensitive to interest rates, he added.
Below is a list of 26 stocks that Goldman added to its newly rebalanced basket of short-duration stocks.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina Tax Center analyzed securities filings to determine what companies would have paid if the tax had been in place last year. They found fewer than 80 publicly traded U.S. companies would have paid any corporate minimum tax in 2021, and just six—including Amazon and
Warren Buffett’s
conglomerate—would have paid half of the estimated $32 billion in revenue the levy would have generated.
The tax, which takes effect in January, is the largest revenue-raising provision in Democrats’ climate, healthcare and tax law. The provision, projected to generate $222 billion over a decade, alters tax incentives and complicates corporate tax decisions. Democrats aimed the provision at large companies that report profits to shareholders but pay relatively little tax.
Berkshire Hathaway would have paid $8.3 billion last year if the new tax law had been in place, according to UNC estimates.
Photo:
Michelle Bishop/Bloomberg News
“Who actually pays a lot is just not very many firms at all,” said Jeff Hoopes, an accounting professor at UNC Chapel Hill who is one of the study’s authors. “My guess is it will not be the same firms every single year.”
Although this wasn’t the aim of the law, it could have an impact on some of the wealthiest Americans. Some Democrats proposed direct taxes on billionaires’ unrealized capital gains earlier in the legislative process. While that wasn’t adopted, the new corporate minimum tax would increase the tax burden on some wealthy shareholders, such as Warren Buffett at Berkshire and
Jeff Bezos
at Amazon.
Mr. Buffett owned 16% of Berkshire Hathaway’s shares earlier this year, while Mr. Bezos owned nearly 13% of Amazon’s, securities filings show. Representatives for Messrs. Bezos and Buffett declined to comment.
Corporate tax directors and accounting firms are also analyzing the law, figuring out how they are affected and preparing to lobby over regulations. Few have estimated its impact publicly.
The UNC analysis comes with caveats. Lacking confidential tax returns that would allow precise calculations, the authors used publicly available financial data. Companies might change behavior to minimize taxes. A one-year snapshot includes unusual situations that cause companies to pay the minimum tax once, generating tax credits that can be used in future years.
Jeff Bezos owned nearly 13% of Amazon shares earlier this year, securities filings indicated.
Photo:
Jay Biggerstaff/USA TODAY Sports
Under the new law, companies averaging more than $1 billion in publicly reported annual profits calculate their taxes twice: once under the regular system with a 21% rate and again with a 15% rate and different rules for deductions and credits. They pay whichever is higher.
The new system, known as the book minimum tax, starts with income reported on the financial statement, not traditional taxable income. Differences between the two—the treatment of stock-based compensation, for example—could drive a company into paying the new tax.
According to the UNC estimates, Berkshire Hathaway would have paid the most in 2021, at $8.3 billion—or about a quarter of the estimated total—followed by Amazon at $2.8 billion and
Ford Motor Co.
at $1.9 billion.
Add the next three companies and that reflects more than half the $31.8 billion total:
AT&T Inc.
at $1.5 billion,
eBay Inc.
at $1.3 billion, and
Moderna Inc.
at $1.2 billion.
Berkshire Hathaway didn’t comment. Amazon declined to comment on the figure but said it awaits federal guidance. Amazon said its taxes reflect a combination of investment and compensation decisions and U.S. laws.
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An AT&T spokesman said the company doesn’t expect the minimum tax to affect its 2023 tax bill. “Academics don’t prepare our taxes; trained and expert tax professionals do that work,” the spokesman said.
Moderna’s tax rate in 2021—its first year with an operating profit—was shaped by the use of deductible net operating losses generated from research expenses, said
Jamey Mock,
the company’s chief financial officer. The company also paid much of its 2021 taxes during 2022. “We do not anticipate those unique conditions factoring into our future tax considerations,” he said.
Melissa Miller, a Ford spokeswoman, said the company pays all the taxes it owes and pointed to tax credits in the law designed to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles.
Heather Jurek, eBay’s vice president of tax, said the study’s computations and interpretations of the law are inaccurate when applied to the company. “UNC’s conclusions are driven by a significant disposition in 2021 that eBay is unlikely to replicate,” she said.
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Exelon Corp.
is among the few companies that has disclosed what it anticipates to be detailed effects from the tax. The utility-services holding company said in an August securities filing that it expected to incur annual cash costs of about $200 million starting next year, down from an earlier $300 million estimate.
Exelon said it continues to evaluate the tax provision and it expects to benefit from legislative provisions encouraging investment in electric vehicles and electrical-grid modernization.
Lynn Good,
chief executive of
Duke Energy Corp.
, told investors in August that the utility giant also expects to be affected, without providing figures. A spokesman said the UNC estimate, $802 million based on 2021 income, is far too high. He said the company also expects to benefit from the legislation’s tax credits for renewable and nuclear power.
Linking taxes closer to publicly reported profits is intentional. It will become harder for companies to maximize profits to impress shareholders while managing taxable profits downward to minimize payments to governments, tax advisers say.
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Mr. Biden has said the new tax means that the days of profitable companies paying no tax are over.
“There are companies that, for a variety of reasons, will perpetually be in a minimum-tax position,” said April Little of accounting firm Grant Thornton LLP.
Some profitable companies could still pay very little or no federal income taxes. Companies can offset up to 75% of tax liability with credits—including renewable-energy incentives Congress just expanded. The law includes special provisions benefiting companies with wireless spectrum investments, defined-benefit pensions and significant capital investments.
“We have the anti-loophole tax bill that’s full of loopholes,” Mr. Hoopes said.
Tax advisers say companies are trying to understand the law, pointing to uncertainties such as the treatment of currency losses and gains, capitalized depreciation deductions and rules around mergers and acquisitions.
By early next year, companies will start providing earnings guidance, making estimated-tax payments and reflecting the tax in quarterly earnings. They might also start crafting mitigation strategies and looking for flexibility in the accounting rules for when income and expenses are counted.
“What I see most people doing right now is worrying about: How is it supposed to work? How am I going to do this without going crazy?” said Diana Wollman, a partner at law firm Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP.
“They’re spending more time trying to figure out what they want to ask for in regulations in terms of either clarity or regulatory discretion than they are trying to figure out how they’re going to game it,” Ms. Wollman said.
Write to Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com and Theo Francis at theo.francis@wsj.com
Maslansky + Partners President Lee Carter weighs in as House Republicans roll out agenda ahead of the November midterms on ‘The Evening Edit.’
The average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. started rising again in the past week, after declining for nearly 100 days in a row during the summer driving season.
The price on Sunday was $3.417 a gallon, according to AAA.
That makes it five straight days of increases that began on Wednesday morning, when the price ticked up to $3.381 per gallon from $3.674 the previous day.
The average price a week a go was $3.678. A year ago it was $3.188.
GAS PRICES RISE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN NEARLY 100 DAYS
Pumping gas at the gas station. (iStock / iStock)
Gas hit a high of $5.016 on June 14.
At the time, U.S. crude was about $120 a barrel and the benchmark international price was even higher. Since then, oil prices – which account for over half of what consumers pay at the pump – have tumbled.
Oil prices plunged about 5% to an eight-month low on Friday as the U.S. dollar hit its strongest level in more than two decades and on fears rising interest rates will tip major economies into recession.
Gas prices on Sunday 9/25/2022,
ENERGY CEO HITS AT ‘ENERGY IGNORANCE’ DRIVING CURRENT POLICY: ‘LITTLE HOPE OF ENDING THE CRISIS ANYTIME SOON’
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell $4.58, or 5.5%, to $78.91.
For the week, WTI was down about 7%, the fourth straight week of declines for the benchmarks, the first time this has happened since December.
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Its not unusual to see wild price swings and oil could be impacted during hurricane season with a storm expected to hit the Gulf and the coast of Florida this week.
FOX Business’ Daniella Genovese contributed to this report.
There’s more bad news for the company that’s supposed to merge with Donald Trump’s Truth Social to take it public: Investors are beginning to jump ship.
Digital World Acquisition Corp. — the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) that Truth Social needs to go public — revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday that investors have backed out of $139 million in commitments of the $1 billion previously announced by the company.
There’s likely more to come. Investors, who agreed to put up the money nearly a year ago, can now drop their commitments because Digital World missed its initial Sept. 20 deadline to merge with Truth Social.
DWAC is extending the time frame for the deal by three months after shareholders refused to approve its bid for a 12-month extension. But investors can still back out.
It’s just the latest trouble for Digital World and Truth Social.
A key vendor complained last month that Truth Social bills were going unpaid. A major web-hosting operator said Truth Social owed about $1.6 million in contractually obligated payments, an allegation suggesting the operation’s finances are in “significant disarray,” Fox Business News reported.
In another setback, Truth Social’s application for a trademark was turned down last month because its name was too similar to other operations.
Truth Social is hardly the juggernaut some investors had hoped. The social media platform is largely a forum for Trump, who repeatedly posts messages touting himself and reposts articles from right-wing media praising him each day.
Responding comments mostly involve QAnon conspiracies, over-the-top pro-Trump and anti-Joe Biden memes, and cringey comments like: “Ode to the greatest President ever.”
Comments lack the back-and-forth of social media platforms like Twitter that make them more of a dialogue. Most negative comments on Truth Social are buried or vanish from the site, which organizers had promised would be censorship free.
Trump launched Truth Social after he was booted off Twitter in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has been using the platform much as he did with Twitter — to rail against enemies, complain he’s being victimized and falsely insist he won the 2020 presidential election.
Last month, Digital World warned in an SEC filing that a dip in Trump’s popularity could hurt the business. The filing noted that Truth Social’s success hinges on the “reputation and popularity” of the investigation-plagued Trump, who chairs the Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns and operates the social media platform.
“In order to be successful, TMTG will need millions of those people to register and regularly use TMTG’s platform,” the filing warned. “If President Trump becomes less popular or there are further controversies that damage his credibility or the desire of people to use a platform associated with him,” the planned merger with Digital World “could be adversely affected,” it warned.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24, 2022 – Behrmann Meat and Processing Inc., an Albers, Ill. establishment, is recalling approximately 87,382 pounds of various ready-to-eat (RTE) meat products that may be adulterated with Listeria monocytogenes, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today. FSIS expects there to be additional product labels added in the near future and urges consumers to check back frequently to view updated labels.
The various RTE meat items were produced from July 7, 2022, to Sept. 9, 2022. The list of products and product codes for the RTE meat products that are subject to recall can be found here and includes all package sizes for all products with the affected lot codes. Available labels for the RTE meat products can be found here.
The products subject to recall bear establishment number “EST 20917” inside the USDA mark of inspection. These items were shipped to retail locations and wholesale distributors in Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri.
The problem was discovered through product and environmental testing performed by FSIS and the establishment, which identified Listeria monocytogenes in the processing environment and in products produced by the establishment.
There have been no confirmed reports of illness or adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about an injury or illness should contact a healthcare provider.
Consumption of food contaminated with L. monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, a serious infection that primarily affects older adults, persons with weakened immune systems, and pregnant women and their newborns. Less commonly, persons outside these risk groups are affected.
Listeriosis can cause fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions sometimes preceded by diarrhea or other gastrointestinal symptoms. An invasive infection spreads beyond the gastrointestinal tract. In pregnant women, the infection can cause miscarriages, stillbirths, premature delivery or life-threatening infection of the newborn. In addition, serious and sometimes fatal infections in older adults and persons with weakened immune systems can occur. Listeriosis is treated with antibiotics. Persons in the higher-risk categories who experience flu-like symptoms within two months after eating contaminated food should seek medical care and tell the health care provider about eating the contaminated food.
FSIS is concerned that some product may be in consumers’ pantries, refrigerators, or freezers. Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them. These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase.
FSIS routinely conducts recall effectiveness checks to verify recalling firms notify theircustomers of the recall and that steps are taken to make certain that the product is no longer available to consumers. When available, the retail distribution list(s) will be posted on the FSIS website at www.fsis.usda.gov/recalls.
Media and consumers with questions regarding the recall can contact Connie Haselhorst, VP Operations, Behrmann Meat and Processing Inc., at (618) 248-5151 or connie@behrmannmeats.com.
