Income Taxes

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2020

Income Tax Disclosure [Abstract]

Income Taxes

Income Taxes

The income tax expense decreased between quarterly periods from $1.32 billion in 2019 to $564 million in 2020. Income before income tax expense increased $190 million from $3.96 billion in 2019 to $4.15 billion in 2020 primarily due to higher downstream margins, production, foreign exchange and asset sales gains, partially offset by the impact of lower prices. The company’s effective tax rate changed between quarterly periods from 33 percent in 2019 to 14 percent in 2020. The reduction in the effective tax rate is primarily due to the resolution of international uncertain tax positions and foreign exchange and asset sale gains that were included in income before tax but collectively did not have significant tax impacts. In addition, the change in the effective tax rate is also impacted by the consequence of the mix effect resulting from the absolute level of earnings or losses and whether they arose in higher or lower tax rate jurisdictions.

Tax positions for Chevron and its subsidiaries and affiliates are subject to income tax audits by many tax jurisdictions throughout the world. For the company’s major tax jurisdictions, examinations of tax returns for certain prior tax years had not been completed as of March 31, 2020. For these jurisdictions, the latest years for which income tax examinations had been finalized were as follows: United States — 2013, Nigeria — 2007, Australia — 2009 and Kazakhstan — 2012.

The company engages in ongoing discussions with tax authorities regarding the resolution of tax matters in the various jurisdictions. Both the outcomes for these tax matters and the timing of resolution and/or closure of the tax audits are highly uncertain. However, it is reasonably possible that developments regarding tax matters in certain tax jurisdictions may result in significant increases or decreases in the company’s total unrecognized tax benefits within the next 12 months. Given the number of years that still remain subject to examination and the number of matters being examined in the various tax jurisdictions, the company is unable to estimate the range of possible adjustments to the balance of unrecognized tax benefits.