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The first table in the report says that FB's effective tax rate in 2020 was 4%. The same chart says that in 2019 their effective tax rate was 17%.

Can someone with insight explain this discrepancy? Is this some accounting artifact, did FB get a COVID tax break, or is it something else?

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in their charts it explains this as follows:

Reflects a one-time income tax benefit of $913 million related to the effects of a tax election to capitalize and amortize certain research and development expenses for U.S. income tax purposes. Excluding this tax benefit, our effective tax rate would have been 11 percentage points higher in Q3 2020.

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