Deferred tax accounts arise because of differences in how firms and the government account for taxes. For example, whereas the government uses accelerated depreciation to calculate taxes owed, firms employ straight-line depreciation. The taxes the company will actually pay, its “cash taxes”, will be lower than the tax expense or provision for income taxes that it will report.
When the business’ reported income is less than its taxable income, the firm generates deferred tax assets (DTAs), whereas when its reported income is greater than its taxable income, deferred tax liabilities (DTLs) are created. They are either reported on the face of the balance sheet, or off its face, hidden away in the notes. DTAs increase a firm’s reported assets, whereas, DTLs can be seen as a kind of interest-free debt. In 1996, Warren Buffett remarked that,
“Berkshire has access to two low-cost, non-perilous sources of leverage that allow us to safely own more assets than our equity capital alone would permit: deferred taxes and “float”… In effect, they give us the benefit of debt – an ability to have more assets working for us – but saddle us with none of its drawbacks.” This is because they are a portion of reported taxes that the business will pay in the future, and, therefore, can deploy in other ways in the interim.
“An Owner’s Manual”, Warren Buffett
The chart below shows Meta Platforms’ DTAs, net of DTLs, from 2011 2023, with the firm reporting DTAs such as share-based compensation, accrued liabilities, and loss carryforwards, and DTLs such as depreciation and amortisation, and right-of-use assets.
The impact of DTAs and DTLs is removed from my calculation of invested capital, because DTLs are a financing account, and DTAs are not representative of the historical capital invested into the business by the shareholders. This is done by subtracting DTAs from invested capital and including DTLs. In my reverse discounted cash flow (DCF) models, I deduct DTLs net of DTAs to arrive at the market’s implied valuation of a business.