A fiscal year (or financial year, or sometimes budget year) is a period used for calculating annual ("yearly") financial statements in businesses and other organizations. In many jurisdictions, regulatory laws regarding accounting and taxation require such reports once per twelve months, but do not require that the period reported on constitutes a calendar year (that is, 1 January to 31 December). Fiscal years vary between businesses and countries. The "fiscal year" may also refer to the year used for income tax reporting.Some companies choose to end their fiscal year on the same day of the week, such day being the one closest to a particular date (for example, the Friday closest to 31 December). Under such a system, some fiscal years will have 52 weeks and others 53 weeks. A major corporation that has adopted this approach is Cisco Systems.Nevertheless, the fiscal year is identical to the calendar year for about 65% of publicly traded companies in the United States and for a majority of large corporations in the UK and elsewhere (with notable exceptions Australia, New Zealand and Japan).Many universities have a fiscal year which ends during the summer, both to align the fiscal year with the school year (and, in some cases involving public universities, with the state government's fiscal year), and because the school is normally less busy during the summer months. In the northern hemisphere this is July in one year to June in the next year. In the southern hemisphere this is January to December of a single calendar year.Some media/communication based organizations use a broadcast calendar as the basis for their fiscal year.The NFL has a term, "league year," which in effect for the league's fiscal year. By rule, the fiscal year begins at 4 PM EDT on March 10 of each calendar year. All financial reports are based on each fiscal year. However, the fiscal year is denoted in the NFL by the year where it starts, not where it ends, unlike most designations.The fiscal year is denoted by the year in which it ends, so United States of America federal government spending incurred on November 14, 2014, would belong to fiscal year 2015, operating on a fiscal calendar of October-September.