The tax bill

passed in December cost Kissimmee’s Tupperware Brands $375 million — and the firm says that wiped out, at least on paper, any profits in the fourth quarter.

The tax bill Congress passed in December cost Kissimmee’s Tupperware Brands $375 million — and the company says that wiped out, at least on paper, any profits during the fourth quarter.

It swung Tupperware to a $326 million loss for the fourth quarter of 2017, compared to a $79 million loss during the same period a year ago.

While many companies are touting big gains and distributing bonuses related to lower corporate tax rates, Tupperware (NYSE: TUP) joins a growing number of companies recording massive onetime losses because of costs to bring cash back from abroad and changes to how deferred taxes are credited under the new law.

In the last two weeks, companies, such as Goldman Sachs, GE and CitiGroup, attributed losses to the tax package, even though the bill cut corporate income tax rates by as much as 40 percent.

Tupperware paid $77.7 million in taxes in 2016, and that jumped to $450.5 million for the 2017 year, according to the company’s earnings release.

Tupperware’s hit on the tax law change was “primarily for things including the repatriation tax, the lower value of the net U.S. deferred tax asset, due to the lower rate and valuation allowances against tax asset,” said chief financial officer Michael Poteshman in a call with investors Wednesday.

The new tax law changed the way the United States handles taxes on foreign operations by American companies. Instead of allowing companies to hold that money overseas because of higher U.S. tax rates, the new law immediately claimed that cash, said Jeffrey Kahn, a tax law professor at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

“Now we are having this forced repatriation, which we are taxing at a fairly small percentage, but there is a lot of money being kept offshore,” Kahn said.

Without adjustments for taxes and a $22 million charge for restructuring, Tupperware would have swung an $81.6 million profit, even though net sales fell 2 percent to $588.6 million in the fourth quarter.

“In December 2017, the U.S. government enacted the Tax Act that significantly changed the U.S. corporate income tax system by, among other things, lowering the U.S. corporate income tax rate and implementing a territorial tax system,” Tupperware said in a statement. “Upon enactment in the fourth quarter of 2017, the Company recorded an estimate of noncash, income tax charges of $375 million.”

While the losses seem staggering, those big tax charges will be a one-time cost, Kahn said.

“In almost every way, the tax law was good for business,” he said.

Money brought back into the United States could be used for any purpose, Kahn said, but much of it will likely be used to pay dividends to investors and repurchase shares, which increases stock prices.

Tupperware declared a 68 cent per share dividend Wednesday as it announced earnings.

Tupperware’s stock price dropped 9.5 percent in trading Wednesday, as analysts expected sales to be higher. Earnings without those adjustments did beat analysts’ expectations by about 9 cents though.

Tupperware, which makes households goods and most notably plastic storage containers, struggled in Europe and North America. U.S. and Canada sales were down 2 percent, which CEO Rick Goings blamed on the fourth quarter of 2017 being a week shorter than the year before based on its fiscal calendar.

Sales were also down in emerging markets in India and Indonesia.

But Mexico, China and Brazil buoyed Tupperware sales. Tupperware segment sales in Mexico were up 13 percent, and China’s sales were up 33 percent, while revenues in Brazil increased 4 percent.