One-Time Charge
Categories: Accounting
Something bad happened. A data breach. Whatever.com had 14 million credit card numbers stolen. It had faulty security. It got class action sued. And lost. So now you own the suers $100 million. You would have made $83 million this quarter, but with this one-time charge, you lost $17 million, pre-tax.
The big think on “one-time” charges runs around whether they really are one-timers. Like...you’re an online seller of crapola.com. Is this really the only time your data will be breached? The only time you’ll be sued or simply have bad tech-y stuff happen?
Probably not. But since you can’t predict when the next “one timer” will happen, you just shout out your misdeeds, show the charge, and hopefully survive to move on, with your career still intact.