Monday, November 10, 2008

Accounting Profit

A company's total earnings, calculated according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), and includes the explicit costs of doing business, such as depreciation, interest and taxes.
Accounting profits tend to be higher than economic profits as they omit certain implicit costs, such as opportunity costs.
For example, if you invest $100,000 to start a business and earned $120,000 in profit, your accounting
profit would be $20,000. Economic profit would add implicit costs, such as the opportunity cost of
$50,000 should you have been employed instead during that period. As such, you would have an
economic loss of $30,000 ($120,000 - $100,000 - $50,000)