On Wednesday, we blogged press reports that higher than expected taxes helped knock Google’s stock down 12% yesterday.  There is an interesting article in today’s Wall Street Journal, Did Google Make Taxes a Scapegoat?, refuting that claim:

Taxes were taxing for Google Inc.’s fourth-quarter earnings — but maybe not as much as investors may have been led to believe. As widely reported the past week, the search-engine company’s fourth-quarter net income of $1.54 a share, excluding items, missed analysts’ consensus expectation by a stock-knocking 22 cents. (Google shares swooned 12% in after-hours trading Tuesday, fell a less-severe 7% in regular-hours trading Wednesday and dropped a further 1.4% yesterday.) Google executives stressed that most of the earnings shortfall was attributable to the Mountain View, Calif., company having to foot a higher U.S. tax bill than anticipated.

But a closer look at Google’s results show that only half of the earnings shortfall — 11 cents a share out of 22 cents a share — may be related to taxes.