This was actually starting to be noticed around Q4 2004 when they had a nice 4 billion dollar income tax cost incurred (thank you government
). They were starting to lose their footing back in Q3, where they incurred losses of $113million, but the income tax really just decimated them. They lost a further $726million in the Q1 and Q2 of this year, making the likelihood of them being able to keep themselves afloat at their current rate very difficult to say the least.
This is truly going to affect the FIRST community in a very bad way in the next few years, and we can only hope that either the affected teams are kept on the budget or that they are able to find sponsors for the 2007 or 2008 season, depending on if/when the cut occurs.
(Data taken from Hoovers.com)