Making the Most of Corporate Tax Reform

Although nothing major has happened yet, rest assured that corporate tax reform is on the way. The Trump administration has made big promises and at some point they are coming. So far, the president has proposed reducing the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, while republican leaders in Congress have proposed a slightly more modest reduction to 20 percent.
Either way, the cut would represent a significant reduction form the current rate of 35 percent and corporations would see a huge boost. For example, if the effective tax rate dropped to 8.4 percent, then S&P companies would see the amount of pretax income they keep jump to about 85 percent from the current amount of about 76 percent.
The president has also proposed a repatriation rate of only 10 percent. In other words all the corporate income that companies are currently holding overseas in order to avoid the 35 percent U.S. corporate tax rate would only be charged a 10 percent rate if it were brought home to the U.S. There could also be a removal of the interest-deductibility, which could actually hurt earnings, but the tax breaks would far outweigh the losses.
Therefore, if you add it all up you get a lower corporate tax rate that would boost earnings by about 11 percent combined with a repatriation rate that would boost earnings another 2 percent. Removing the interest-deductibility would lower earnings by 2 percent, therefore leaving a net boost of 11 percent to S&P 500 earnings.
Telemedicine | Clay Whitehead
About Clay Whitehead Michael is co-founder and CEO of Drchrono. He has worked as a software engineer since 2000. He had implemented components of the Bloomberg Terminal, used by customers worldwide. Michael has a B.E. in Computer Engineering & Computer Science from Stony Brook University. Michael attended Columbia University in Information Systems. Clay is the…
Disruptive HR Models | Keith Kitani
About Keith Kitani Keith Kitani is the founder and CEO of GuideSpark. He’s a successful entrepreneur and software executive with over 20 years of experience building technology companies. He has been building Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products and businesses since 1999 when he co-founded Presedia (a rapid eLearning company) and sold it to Macromedia in 2003. At…
Maintaining Relevance | Dirk Lorenz
About Dirk Lorenz Dirk Lorenz ventured out and acquired Fremont Flowers while only 21 and has owned and operated the business for over 25 years. Dirk takes pride in giving back to the community and has started several events at Fremont Flowers over the years such as Good Neighbor Day and Welcome Teacher Day. Dirk…
Is the Market OverValued? | Hal Heaton
About Hal Heaton Hal Heaton is a Professor of Finance at the BYU Marriott Graduate School of Business where he teaches advanced courses in finance and capital markets. Before joining the faulting at BYU, Hal worked at Boston Consulting where he dealt with strategic planning issues for large firms. He has also served on…