Corporate Profits: Hearings Before the Joint Committee on the Economic Report, Congress of the United States, Eightieth Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to Sec. 5 (A) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress

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U.S. Government Printing Office, 1949 - 683 pages

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Page 198 - Mr. Chairman, I would like to insert into the record at this point. (The statement of interest and usury statutes is as follows:) Interest and usury statutes, May %1, 1943 i No limit.
Page 455 - No great stretch of the imagination is required to foresee that if nothing is done to check the growth in concentration, either the giant corporations will ultimately take over the country, or the Government will be impelled to step in and impose some form of direct regulation in the public interest.
Page 94 - Stockholders, employees, and the general public should be informed that a business must be able to retain out of profits amounts sufficient to replace productive facilities at current prices if it is to stay in business. The committee therefore gives its full support to the use of supplementary financial schedules, explanations, or footnotes by which management may explain the need for retention of earnings.
Page 587 - Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily * * *. Lenin was certainly right.
Page 452 - In the 1940 national defense crisis, business displayed much the same attitude that it had shown 23 years earlier. Business would help the government and the people, but the basis of payment therefor would have to be fixed before the wheels would begin to turn. Profits, taxes, loans, and so forth, appeared more important to business than getting guns, tanks, airplane motors into production. . . . Speaking bluntly, the government and the public are "over a barrel" when it comes to dealing with business...
Page 56 - Act, except that for the purpose of the tax imposed by this section the income embraced in a return of a corporation, joint-stock company or association, or insurance company, shall be credited with the amount received as dividends upon the stock or from the net earnings of any other corporation, jointstock company or association, or insurance company, which is taxable upon its net income as provided in this title.
Page 177 - profits" is a popular expression, the technical counterpart of which is "net income." Net income, or profit, however, at best is an accounting interpretation or abstraction, not a reality or tangible quantity such as "cash in the till." According to accounting practice, it is determined by taking the total income received by an enterprise and deducting the operating expenses and taxes, and then subtracting an estimate of the extent to which the capital assets employed have been extinguished ; that...
Page 281 - The dollar is not worth as much today; it is worth only half what it was in 1940. Second. We are supplying consumers with almost twice as much oil. As we have worked harder, spent larger sums, and done more business, we have naturally taken in more money. Third. Our depreciation allowances are based on original cost. Therefore our accounting profit does not give now, as it did before the war, a measure of the funds available. for increased capacity and for dividends. Before we can even consider dividends...
Page 514 - ... approximately one-half the profit margin expressed as a percentage of sales, realized in the year 1941 largely under the conditions of a competitive market...
Page 231 - Because of the disturbed price levels, it has been decided to modify at this time the Corporation's depreciation policies by accelerating the charges for the early years of productive use of facilities acquired since the war, amortizing on a short time basis the excess cost of such acquisitions over prewar price levels.

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