SeaWorld Entertainment avoids paying income tax in part using accelerated depreciation.

This must be one of those loopholes politicians made and are always talking about closing....

Pretty sure I depreciated at an accelerated rate when I turned 40 a couple months back. Think the IRS will buy it when I do my taxes next year?

Honestly, I've taken advantage of this even as a small business. Obviously I need to buy computers, software and cameras and such to run these sites, and there were a few years where I could claim big capital items all in one year. That made a huge impact on my income tax.

Man, could you imagine being the person in charge of auditing that if the IRS chose to do so?

In our office we often say, "We don't make the rules, we just play by them".

Some of the accelerated depreciation provisions were put into place recently to help encourage businesses to spend money to stimulate the economy. Businesses take advantage of it and then politicians often complain to the media about companies who don't pay taxes. And in many instances, the companies would have purchased the assets anyways. Magic of politics. LOL

As a general rule, corporations are not taxed like they once were. As a portion of federal revenues overall, payroll taxes have taken over the position once held by corporate income taxes - reversing positions even. So SeaWorld is really just following the same overall trend as most businesses.