GM Reddit Mentions | ChartExchange

Thought it'd be interesting to pull the most recent 10-Q or 10-K from every S&P 500 company and diff it against the prior filing--every added, removed, and reworded passage.
There's \~500 companies, and many of them just had their quarter-end in June or July.
The recurring theme I found was the tariff refund, and how differently it gets booked.
From April 2025, the US gov't imposed broad tariffs under the IEEPA, a 1977 law originally written for sanctions, not trade.
Importers paid the duties at the border, but a duty isn't an expense on day one. Under inventory accounting (ASC 330), it's added to the cost of the imported inventory, and it reaches COGS when that inventory sells.
Then, on February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that IEEPA never authorized tariffs at all. In March, the trade court ordered US Customs to reliquidate entries without the duties, and refunds started to flow.
Here's why that matters:
→ The duties went out through cost of sales as tariffed goods sold, so the refund reverses the same line: a credit to COGS for goods already sold, or a lower carrying value for inventory still on hand.
→ For goods already sold, the refund isn't just cash back. It's a gross-margin lift in the quarter the recovery is booked. For goods still on the shelf, the benefit shows up later, as they sell.
→ For an import-heavy company, that lift can turn a soft margin quarter into a beat, and it's entirely one-time.
Customs says $166B of IEEPA duties were invalidated, and it has accepted $129B in refund submissions so far. Within the S&P 500, [WSJ counts](https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariff-refunds-company-earnings-1af269a2) 40+ companies that have booked \~$9.6B, \~$2.1B of it already received in cash.
Reading the filings myself, closer to 90 names disclose IEEPA refunds or claims in some form, most still working through the process.
Unsurprisingly, they concentrate in the sectors that move physical goods, with almost nothing in financials, energy, utilities, real estate, or communication services.
The first table below has the sector split, with the names I found a figure or specific disclosure for:
|Sector|Disclosing|Tickers|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Industrials|30|DE, UPS, LMT, EMR, CAT, HUBB, MAS, CARR, ETN, FDX|
|Consumer Discretionary|17|NKE, AMZN, GM, TPR, ROST, DECK, LULU, TJX|
|Consumer Staples|16|PG, DLTR, CHD, WMT, TGT|
|Health Care|14|CAH, SOLV, MTD, ISRG|
|Information Technology|12|AAPL, MSI, TRMB|
|Materials|2|IFF, DOW|
|**Total**|**90**\*|**of 503 S&P** **500 companies**|
*\*Counts approximate.*
The dollars land on a few big names:
→ Apple: Applied for refunds and recognizes what it receives against cost of sales, but discloses no figure (the \~$2.2B number is WSJ's reporting, not the 10-Q).
→ Nike: $986M benefit to cost of sales, $302M in cash plus a $684M receivable.
→ Amazon: \~$640M received, booked as a reduction to cost of sales.
→ FedEx: $3.3B in claims and \~$800M received, but it recorded a $749M liability to hand most of it back to customers.
→ GM: Net $500M favorable adjustment.
GAAP has no rule written for tariff refunds. Companies reason by analogy, and two models are accepted: (1) accrue a receivable once recovery is probable, or (2) treat the refund as a gain contingency and book nothing until the money is essentially certain.
So two companies with identical claims can report completely different numbers: one already has the refund in earnings, the other hasn't recorded a dollar of it.
The second table below sorts the names by which treatment their filings describe:
|Booking treatment|What it means for this year's numbers|Tickers|
|:-|:-|:-|
|1. Refund recognized in income|A credit to cost of sales (or to inventory still on hand); the gross-margin benefit is fully in reported earnings.|NKE, AMZN, GM, UPS, DE, LMT, DLTR, PG, TPR, EMR, IFF, AAPL|
|2. Receivable accrued as probable|A receivable is recorded once recovery is judged probable (ASC 410-30); earnings benefit before cash arrives, and the estimate can be revised.|CAT, CAH, HUBB, CHD, MAS|
|3. Claim filed, nothing booked|Treated as a gain contingency (ASC 450-30); no asset or income is recorded until the refund is realized or essentially assured.|WMT, TGT, ROST, DECK, LULU, TJX|
|4. Risk language walked back|No amount recorded; tariff risk language softened or deleted versus the prior filing.|DOW, DE, CARR, ETN|
|5. Refund held for customers|Duties were advanced on customers' behalf, so refunds received are recorded mainly as a liability owed back to customers.|FDX|
Deere (DE) appears twice on purpose--it booked a $272M recovery and softened its tariff language. A few more names, mostly instrument and device makers (SOLV, MTD, ISRG) plus MSI and TRMB, disclosed claims without yet saying how they'll book them.
So when an import-heavy company beats on gross margin this year, check the filing for a tariff-refund credit, and which of the five treatments it used.
How much of the beat belongs in next year's model depends on the bucket:
→ Recognized income is real, and done. No future quarter gets it again.
→ A receivable accrued as probable is management's estimate, and estimates get revised.
→ A filed claim means the refund may still come, but nothing's in the numbers yet.
→ And a big gross number like FedEx's mostly isn't the company's to keep.
Obviously, all of these are one-time. Whatever the refund adds to this year's gross margin, next year's has to be earned without it.
I pulled and diffed all \~500 filings with an EDGAR reading tool I built ([SECSift](https://secsift.com/)), then checked every filing figure above against the source. Please correct me if I got anything wrong!

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