How May the New Tax Act Affect Your ESOP

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 (the “Act”) was signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. It is heralded as making the most significant changes in corporate taxation in the US in more than 30 years. The Act makes changes to C corporations, S corporations and other pass-through entities. Some changes are permanent while others are temporary. With regard to employee stock ownership plans (“ESOP”s), the Act impacts both how valuations are performed and what the outcome of the valuation will be.

Although many changes in the Act affect ESOPs in minor ways, the most significant impact is the permanent reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21%, effective in 2018. Many ESOP valuations are based either partially or fully on an income approach, and often the discounted cash flow (“DCF”) method is used. Under the DCF method, the appraiser normally starts with the EBIT (earnings before income tax) value and then subtracts estimated federal and state income taxes. Those estimated taxes will now be much less than in prior years, resulting in an increase in discount rates and, in the end, stock value. Many expert ESOP appraisers predict the change in the corporate tax rate could result in a stock value increase of 10% to 15%, or more.

Another way to value ESOPs is a market approach, which values an ESOP company by comparison to other similar companies using one of two methods. The guideline public company (“GPC”) method uses public companies as a comparison to the private company the ESOP owns. The Act should not have much of an effect on the GPC method because the decreased taxation should already be reflected in December 31, 2017 pricing multiples of public companies.