On its quarterly SEC filings, Marathon Oil attributed a $411 million tax benefit to a section of the CARES Act called the Net Operating Loss Provision. A sly late addition to the March legislation, this provision allows businesses to carry back losses from 2020 or 2021 to previous tax years. In other words, companies can apply a loss resulting from the pandemic to last year’s profits (or any year’s losses back to 2018). In many cases this can trigger a tax refund, particularly if the firm filed its 2019 taxes on time. Status: Marathon Oil took the pass-back on its quarterly earning statement (SEC Form 10-Q) dated March 31, 2020.
