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Write-off
A write-off is a reduction of the recognized value of something. In accounting, this is a recognition of the reduced or zero value of an asset. In income tax statements, this is a reduction of taxable income, as a recognition of certain expenses required to produce the income. Income tax In income tax calculation, a write-off is the itemized deduction of an item's value from a person's taxable income. Thus, if a person in the United States has a taxable income of $50,000 per year, a $100 telephone for business use would lower the taxable income to $49,900. If that person is in a 25% tax bracket, the tax due would be lowered by $25. Thus the net cost of the telephone is $75 instead of $100. In order for business owners to write off business expenses, the IRS states that purchases must be both ordinary and necessary. This means that deductible items must be usual and required for the business owner's field of work. For example, a telemarketer may deduct the purchase of a phone, ...
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Revaluation Of Fixed Assets
In finance, a revaluation of fixed assets is an action that may be required to accurately describe the true value of the capital goods a business owns. This should be distinguished from planned depreciation, where the recorded decline in the value of an asset is tied to its age. Fixed assets are held by an enterprise for the purpose of producing goods or rendering services, as opposed to being held for resale for the normal course of business. An example, machines, buildings, patents, or licenses can be fixed assets of a business. The purpose of a revaluation is to bring into the books the fair market value of fixed assets. This may be helpful in order to decide whether to invest in another business. If a company wants to sell one of its assets, it is revalued in preparation for sales negotiations. Reasons for revaluation It is common to see companies revaluing their fixed assets. It is important to make a distinction between a 'private' revaluation and a 'public' revaluation ...
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Bad Debt
Bad debt, occasionally called uncollectible accounts expense, is a monetary amount owed to a creditor that is unlikely to be paid and for which the creditor is not willing to take action to collect for various reasons, often due to the debtor not having the money to pay, for example due to a company going into liquidation or insolvency. There are various technical definitions of what constitutes a bad debt, depending on accounting conventions, regulatory treatment and the institution provisioning. In the USA, bank loans with more than ninety days' arrears become "problem loans". Accounting sources advise that the full amount of a bad debt be written off to the profit and loss account or a provision for bad debts as soon as it is foreseen. Doubtful debt Doubtful debts are those debts which a business or individual is unlikely to be able to collect. The reasons for potential non-payment can include disputes oversupply, delivery, the condition of the item, or the appearance of f ...
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Mark-to-market Accounting
Mark-to-market (MTM or M2M) or fair value accounting is accounting for the " fair value" of an asset or liability based on the current market price, or the price for similar assets and liabilities, or based on another objectively assessed "fair" value. Fair value accounting has been a part of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) in the United States since the early 1990s, and is now regarded as the "gold standard" in some circles. Failure to use it is viewed as the cause of the Orange County Bankruptcy, even though its use is considered to be one of the reasons for the Enron scandal and the eventual bankruptcy of the company, as well as the closure of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen. Mark-to-market accounting can change values on the balance sheet as market conditions change. In contrast, historical cost accounting, based on the past transactions, is simpler, more stable, and easier to perform, but does not represent current market value. It summarizes pa ...
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Merriam-Webster
Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as G & C Merriam Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1843, after Noah Webster died, the company bought the rights to '' An American Dictionary of the English Language'' from Webster's estate. All Merriam-Webster dictionaries trace their lineage to this source. In 1964, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. acquired Merriam-Webster, Inc. as a subsidiary. The company adopted its current name in 1982. History Noah Webster In 1806, Webster published his first dictionary, ''A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language''. In 1807 Webster started two decades of intensive work to expand his publication into a fully comprehensive dictionary, ''An American Dictionary of the English Language''. To help him trace the etymology of words, Webster lea ...
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Hull Loss
A hull loss is an aviation accident that catastrophically damages the aircraft beyond economical repair, resulting in a total loss. The term also applies to situations in which the aircraft is missing, the search for their wreckage is terminated or when the wreckage is logistically inaccessible. The metric of "Hull losses per 100,000 flight departures" has been used throughout the aviation industry to measure the relative risk of a given flight or aircraft. From 1959 to 2006, the first part of the mainstream jet aircraft era, 384 of 835 hull losses, or 46%, were nonfatal. Airlines typically have insurance to cover hull loss on a twelve-month basis. Before the September 11 attacks in 2001, the typical insured sum for a hull loss policy could reach $250 million. Constructive hull loss takes into account other incidental expenses beyond repair, such as salvage, logistical costs of repairing non- airworthy aircraft within the confines of the incident site, and recertifying the a ...
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Depreciation
In accountancy, depreciation is a term that refers to two aspects of the same concept: first, the actual decrease of fair value of an asset, such as the decrease in value of factory equipment each year as it is used and wear, and second, the allocation in accounting statements of the original cost of the assets to periods in which the assets are used (depreciation with the matching principle). Depreciation is thus the decrease in the value of assets and the method used to reallocate, or "write down" the cost of a tangible asset (such as equipment) over its useful life span. Businesses depreciate long-term assets for both accounting and tax purposes. The decrease in value of the asset affects the balance sheet of a business or entity, and the method of depreciating the asset, accounting-wise, affects the net income, and thus the income statement that they report. Generally, the cost is allocated as depreciation expense among the periods in which the asset is expected to be used. ...
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Depletion (accounting)
Depletion is an accounting and tax concept used most often in the mining, timber, and petroleum industries. It is similar to depreciation in that it is a cost recovery system for accounting and tax reporting: "The depletion deduction" allows an owner or operator to account for the reduction of a product's reserves. Types of depletion For tax purposes, the two types of depletion are percentage depletion and cost depletion. For mineral property, the method leading to the largest deduction is generally used. For standing timber, use of the cost depletion method is required. Depletion, for both accounting purposes and United States tax purposes, is a method of recording the gradual expense or use of natural resources over time. Depletion is the using up of natural resources by mining, quarrying, drilling, or felling. According to the IRS Newswire, over 50 percent of oil and gas extraction businesses use cost depletion to figure their depletion deduction. Mineral property inclu ...
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Charge-off
A charge-off or chargeoff is a declaration by a creditor (usually a credit card account) that an amount of debt is unlikely to be collected. This occurs when a consumer becomes severely delinquent on a debt. Traditionally, creditors make this declaration at the point of six months without payment. A charge-off is a form of write-off. Legal consequences of a charge-off While a charge-off is considered to be "written off as uncollectable" by the lender, the debt is still legally valid and remains so after the fact. The creditor has the right to legally collect the full amount for the time period permitted by the statute of limitations applicable to the location of the financial institution and the consumer's residence. Depending on the location, this period may be a certain number of years (e.g. three to seven years) or, in some places, indefinite. Methods of collection that can be used include contacts from internal collections staff, outside collection agencies, arbitration, or a la ...
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Amortization (other)
Amortization or amortisation may refer to: * The process by which loan principal decreases over the life of an amortizing loan * Amortization (accounting), the expensing of acquisition cost minus the residual value of intangible assets in a systematic manner, or the completion of such a process * Amortization (tax law), the cost recovery system for intangible property * Amortized analysis In computer science, amortized analysis is a method for analyzing a given algorithm's complexity, or how much of a resource, especially time or memory, it takes to execute. The motivation for amortized analysis is that looking at the worst-case ..., a method of analysing the execution cost of algorithms * Amortization (zoning), the time period a non-conforming property has to conform to a new zoning classification before the non-conforming use becomes prohibited {{Dab ...
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Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large national audience. Daily broadsheet editions are printed for D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. The ''Post'' was founded in 1877. In its early years, it went through several owners and struggled both financially and editorially. Financier Eugene Meyer purchased it out of bankruptcy in 1933 and revived its health and reputation, work continued by his successors Katharine and Phil Graham (Meyer's daughter and son-in-law), who bought out several rival publications. The ''Post'' 1971 printing of the Pentagon Papers helped spur opposition to the Vietnam War. Subsequently, in the best-known episode in the newspaper's history, reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led the American press's investigation into what became known as the Watergat ...
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Financial Institution
Financial institutions, sometimes called banking institutions, are business entities that provide services as intermediaries for different types of financial monetary transactions. Broadly speaking, there are three major types of financial institutions: # Depository institutions – deposit-taking institutions that accept and manage deposits and make loans, including banks, building societies, credit unions, trust companies, and mortgage loan companies; # Contractual institutions – insurance companies and pension funds # Investment institutions – investment banks, underwriters, and other different types of financial entities managing investments. Financial institutions can be distinguished broadly into two categories according to ownership structure: * Commercial banks * Cooperative banks Some experts see a trend toward homogenisation of financial institutions, meaning a tendency to invest in similar areas and have similar business strategies. A consequence of ...
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2007 Subprime Mortgage Financial Crisis
The United States subprime mortgage crisis was a multinational financial crisis that occurred between 2007 and 2010 that contributed to the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. It was triggered by a large decline in US home prices after the collapse of a housing bubble, leading to mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures, and the devaluation of housing-related securities. Declines in residential investment preceded the Great Recession and were followed by reductions in household spending and then business investment. Spending reductions were more significant in areas with a combination of high household debt and larger housing price declines. The housing bubble preceding the crisis was financed with mortgage-backed securities (MBSes) and collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which initially offered higher interest rates (i.e. better returns) than government securities, along with attractive risk ratings from rating agencies. While elements of the crisis first became more visib ...
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