Here is an example to illustrate that you don’t need be a professional trader or investor or a research analyst to investigate company financials or SEC Filings data. Imagine you are a New York Times reporter researching political influence on big enterprise versus medium sized businesses during the Bush Administration. You have a choice. Publish your opinions or publish observations based on facts that you can investigate asking a few simple questions.
First find out how many big business (say with sales over $3B) are there in year 2000 when the Bush administration began by asking “year 2000 companies with sales > 3 billion“. There are about 600 public traded companies.
Next let’s find out how these companies fared in terms of income and taxes paid over the last 12 years — to cover both before and after year 2000. You can ask this question “last 12 years Income Tax Payables, net income for year 2000 companies with sales > 3 billion” and see that income shows steady and good growth (given the sharp slope) but taxes are fairly flat especially since year 2000.
Tax and Income of Major corporations
Are medium sized companies taxes also benefiting similarly? We can find out by revising sales range in earlier question to “between 300 million and 3 billion” as “last 12 years Income Tax Payables, net income for year 2000 companies with sales between 300 million and 3 billion“. The chart for income shows good slope (obviously discounting, 2001 recession). Looking at the slope of taxes it should be clear that mid sized companies were NOT benefiting the same way as big enterprises.
Tax and Income of Midsize companies
So you do not have to be a pro to get some quick facts. How much of this is political influence is where more journalistic experience may be needed.
