Week 4: Operating the Corporation The Cheesecake Factory Case Part 1 You are an advisor to The Cheesecake Factory. It is late December 2017, and you are dining with their executive team at one of their restaurants, celebrating a successful year. As you take another bite of delicious cheesecake, their CFO asks you for your thoughts on the recently enacted corporate tax legislation. The CFO is referring to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which you've heard is a major tax overhaul. While you are not a tax specialist, you quickly recall some key changes from the TCJA and apply principles you learned from the Taxes and Business Strategy course you took a few years earlier. The key tax changes you recall are: 1. The corporate tax rate will go from 35% to 21%. 2. Tax depreciation will become much more favorable, with a lot of capital expenditures (i.e., purchases of equipment but not real estate) becoming eligible for immediate expensing for tax purposes. 3. The net operating loss rules will change from a 2-year carryback period to no carrybacks, and from a 20-year carryforward period to no limit on the carryforward period. 4. The effective date will be