Get Started for Free Contexxia identifies hard-to-find pieces of information in SEC filings. No more highlighters, no more redlining, no more poring over huge documents. AMAZON COM INC (1018724) 10-K published on Jan 31, 2019 at 8:22 pm
Reporting Period: Dec 30, 2018
We are subject to a variety of taxes and tax collection obligations in the U.S. (federal and state) and numerous foreign jurisdictions. We may recognize additional tax expense and be subject to additional tax liabilities, including other liabilities for tax collection obligations due to changes in laws, regulations, administrative practices, principles, and interpretations related to tax, including changes to the global tax framework, competition, and other laws and accounting rules in various jurisdictions. Such changes could come about as a result of economic, political, and other conditions. An increasing number of jurisdictions are considering or have adopted laws or administrative practices that impose new tax measures, including revenue-based taxes, targeting online commerce and the remote selling of goods and services. These include new obligations to collect sales, consumption, value added, or other taxes on online marketplaces and remote sellers, or other requirements that may result in liability for third party obligations. For example, the European Union, certain member states, and other countries have proposed or enacted taxes on online advertising and marketplace service revenues. Our results of operations and cash flows could be adversely effected by additional taxes of this nature imposed on us or additional taxes or penalties resulting from the failure to comply with any collection obligations or failure to provide information about our customers, suppliers, and other third parties for tax reporting purposes to various government agencies. In some cases we also may not have sufficient notice to enable us to build systems and adopt processes to properly comply by the effective date.
Our tax expense and liabilities may also be affected by other factors, such as changes in our business operations, acquisitions, investments, entry into new businesses and geographies, intercompany transactions, the relative amount of our foreign earnings, losses incurred in jurisdictions for which we are not able to realize related tax benefits, the applicability of special tax regimes, changes in foreign currency exchange rates, changes in our stock price, and changes in our deferred tax assets and liabilities and their valuation. Significant judgment is required in evaluating and estimating our tax expense and liabilities. In the ordinary course of our business, there are many transactions and calculations for which the ultimate tax determination is uncertain. For example, the legislation known as the U.S. Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “U.S. Tax Act”) requires complex computations to be performed that were not previously required by U.S. tax law, significant judgments to be made in interpretation of the provisions of the U.S. Tax Act, significant estimates in calculations, and the preparation and analysis of information not previously relevant or regularly produced. The U.S. Treasury Department, the IRS, and other standard-setting bodies will continue to interpret or issue guidance on how provisions of the U.S. Tax Act will be applied or otherwise administered. As future guidance is issued, we may make adjustments to amounts that we have previously recorded that may materially impact our financial statements in the period in which the adjustments are made.
The U.S. Tax Act was signed into law on December 22, 2017. The U.S. Tax Act significantly revised the U.S. corporate income tax by, among other things, lowering the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, eliminating certain deductions, imposing a mandatory one-time tax on accumulated earnings of foreign subsidiaries, introducing new tax regimes, and changing how foreign earnings are subject to U.S. tax. The U.S. Tax Act also enhanced and extended the option to claim accelerated depreciation deductions by allowing full expensing of qualified property, primarily equipment, through 2022. We reasonably estimated the effects of the U.S. Tax Act and recorded provisional amounts in our financial statements as of December 31, 2017. We recorded a provisional tax benefit for the impact of the U.S. Tax Act of approximately $789 million. This amount was primarily comprised of the remeasurement of federal net deferred tax liabilities resulting from the permanent reduction in the U.S. statutory corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, after taking into account the mandatory one-time tax on the accumulated earnings of our foreign subsidiaries. The amount of this one-time tax was not material. In 2018, we completed our determination of the accounting implications of the U.S. Tax Act.
In February 2016, the FASB issued an ASU amending the accounting for leases. The new guidance requires the recognition of lease assets and liabilities for operating leases with terms of more than 12 months, in addition to those currently recorded, on our consolidated balance sheets. Presentation of leases within the consolidated statements of operations and consolidated statements of cash flows will be generally consistent with the current lease accounting guidance. The ASU is effective for reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2018, with early adoption permitted. We will adopt this ASU on January 1, 2019 with an immaterial cumulative adjustment to retained earnings rather than retrospectively adjusting prior periods. This adoption approach will result in a balance sheet presentation that will not be comparable to the prior period in the first year of adoption. The adoption of this ASU will result in the recognition of operating lease assets and liabilities of approximately $21 billion, which includes the reclassification of finance leases to operating leases of approximately $1.2 billion, and the derecognition of build-to-suit lease assets and liabilities when we do not control the building during the construction period of approximately $1.5 billion.
In November 2018, Dynamic Data Technologies, LLC filed a complaint for patent infringement against Amazon.com, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Inc., and Amazon Digital Services, LLC in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The complaint alleges, among other things, that products and services with H.265 functionality, including Amazon Elastic Transcoder, AWS Elemental Media Convert, AWS Elemental MediaLive, certain EC2 instances, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon Fire TV, and Amazon Fire tablets, infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 8,135,073, entitled “Enhancing Video Images Depending On Prior Image Enhancements”; 6,774,918, entitled “Video Overlay Processor With Reduced Memory and Bus Performance Requirements”; and 7,571,450, entitled “System For And Method Of Displaying Information.” The complaint also alleges that products and services with H.265 functionality, including AWS Elemental Media Convert, AWS Elemental MediaLive, certain EC2 instances, Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon Fire TV, infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 8,073,054, entitled “Unit For And Method Of Estimating A Current Motion Vector”; 6,996,177, entitled “Motion Estimation”; 8,311,112, entitled “System And Method For Video Compression Using Predictive Coding”; and 7,894,529, entitled “Method And Device For Determining Motion Vectors.” The complaint also alleges that products and services for encoding video data, including Amazon Elastic Transcoder and Amazon Video, infringe U.S. Patent No. 8,184,689, entitled “Method Video Encoding And Decoding Preserving Cache Localities,” and that products and services with VP9 encoding functionality, including Amazon Elastic Transcoder and Amazon Fire TV, infringe U.S. Patent No. 7,519,230, entitled “Background Motion Vector Detection.” The complaint seeks an unspecified amount of damages, enhanced damages, attorneys’ fees, and interest. We dispute the allegations of wrongdoing and intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter.