Not really. Now, please remember, im not a Japanese or American tax lawyer. A write-off is just a bookkeeping manouver that means: we are never going to make a profit on this investment so we will take the remaining cost right now instead of in installment over the bookkeeping calculated time frame we intended. It might have a time-vslue of money effect on the total value of the cost, but it’s not very significant. The tax write-off was always going to come; it was a cost after all. It’s just a matter of timing.

Let me give you an example. I’m developing a game console and it takes me 10 dollars and a year to do it. In a naïve bookkeeping world, I’d have a cost of 10 dollars the first year and for the next ten years, I’d have the COGS (cost of goods sold) as the cost and the money people pay as the income. This is not how modern bookkeeping works. The cost of year one will be split on the (for example) first 10 years of the game console life as this more realistically reflects what is going on. Cashflow is a very different thing.

I’m sure I’ve used the wrong terms for cost and income, I always do. But no one that didn’t already know what I said will notice…