The New York Times points out something rather interesting about an otherwise mundane business story. Wal-Mart's fourth-quarter earnings report tells the tale of how changes in the tax code has both helped corporations and hurt them.
As the Times puts it, during the fourth quarter of last year, "the tax code gave and the tax code took away."
The paper explains:
"The company reported higher-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday of $1.67 a share, up from $1.51 a share a year ago, largely because of tax credits that brought its corporate tax rate lower than usual.
"But the recent payroll-tax increase and an Internal Revenue Service delay in processing tax returns hit consumers, and that affected the holiday period and sales in February. For the fiscal fourth quarter, which ended Jan. 31, sales at stores open at least a year rose 1 percent at Wal-Mart stores in the United States; analysts had expected a 1.7 percent increase."