Joan Vines, a senior director in the compensation and benefits practice at accounting firm BDO, says the charges companies are reporting reflect Financial Accounting Standard 109, which governs income tax accruals.

In 2003, when Congress agreed to give a subsidy to companies that provided retiree drug coverage, the law said that it would be tax-free. So companies booked their liability to pay for the retirees' drug benefits in the future, and they also booked the subsidy and the deferred tax benefit, Vines says. Under FAS 109, "I have to adjust the deferred tax assets to the right amount after this law change," she says. "There's not a transition to bring that in the financial statements. There's a change, and without a transition to amortize it, it all comes into the quarter that the law changed."

The American Benefits Council, which represents big employers on benefits issues, is arguing that Congress should go back and reverse the tax it imposed on the retiree drug subsidy, Klein says. He notes that the council commissioned a study that estimates the tax could result in 1.6 million to 2 million retirees losing their company-provided drug benefits or seeing those benefits change. Since the subsidy to employers is less than what it costs Medicare to provide such benefits, the extra federal spending to provide those benefits could erode or eliminate the revenue the government will take in from the tax, he says.