Warranty & Corporate Inversions: Although warranty has an effect on taxes, the movement of a company's headquarters from a high-tax to a low-tax country doesn't seem to change its warranty claims or accrual rates. The merger of product lines has a much bigger effect, no matter what their nationality. But in at least one case, a company leaving the U.S. decided to cease complying with warranty reporting rules.

In last week's newsletter, there were several solar equipment companies profiled that were incorporated in one country, had their headquarters in another country, and sold their stock in New York. Several were startups from Asia, which had acquired small U.S. companies in order to gain their stock listings.

This, we said, could prove troublesome if any of the companies failed to outlive their extra-long warranties. However, this globalization of warranty liabilities is not all happening in one direction. An increasing number of U.S. companies seem to be re-incorporating themselves in Bermuda, Ireland, or some other business-friendly nation, appending a "PLC" or an "Ltd" to their name, and continuing business as usual.

Most are moving abroad for tax reasons. For instance, the corporate tax rate in Ireland is 12.5%. It's 35% in the U.S. Therefore, by acquiring an Irish company and moving the official headquarters of the combined companies to Dublin, a formerly U.S.-based company could cut its nominal tax rate by almost two-thirds (not counting deductions).

Since the disclosure of warranty expense information is a requirement of U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), we wanted to see what effect this new kind of corporate emigration is having upon those disclosures. Changes in warranty accrual rates affect net income, and therefore have an impact on taxes. Warranty claims payments include parts affected by sales tax or VAT, and labor affected by payroll taxes. So there are clear links between warranty and taxes. But while these corporate inversions have a clear impact on tax rates, do they also have any impact in warranty expense rates?