Monetary Policy ... Monetary policy differs from fiscal policy, which refers to taxation, government spending, and associated borrowing. Overview Monetary policy rests on the relationship between the rates of interest in an economy, that is, the price at which money can be borrowed, and the total supply of money...
Insurance ... Events that contain speculative elements, such as ordinary business risks or even purchasing a lottery ticket, are generally not considered insurable...
Life Insurance ... The advantage for the policy owner is "peace of mind", in knowing that the death of the insured person will not result in financial hardship for loved ones. Life policies are legal contracts and the terms of the contract describe the limitations of the insured events...
Property Insurance ... In May 2007, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer announced more than $4.5 billion would be made available to rebuild the 16-acre (65,000 m2) WTC complex as part of a major insurance claims settlement...
Property Tax ... There are three species or types of property: land, improvements to land (immovable man-made objects, such as buildings), and personal property (movable man-made objects). Real property (also called real estate or realty) means the combination of land and improvements...
Value Added Tax ... The "value added" to a product by a business is the sale price charged to its customer, minus the cost of materials and other taxable inputs... With the VAT, collections, remittances to the government, and credits for taxes already paid occur each time a business in the supply chain purchases products...
Corporate Tax ... Company income subject to tax is often determined much like taxable income for individuals. Generally, the tax is imposed on net profits...
Ad Valorem Tax ... A conventional or retail sales tax attempts to achieve this by charging the tax only on the final end user, unlike a gross receipts tax levied on the intermediate business who purchases materials for production or ordinary operating expenses prior to delivering a service or product to the marketplace... Maurice Lauré, joint director of the French tax authority, the Direction générale des impôts, as taxe sur la valeur ajoutée (TVA in French) was first to introduce VAT with effect from 10 April 1954 for large businesses, and extended over time to all business sectors...
History Of Money ... Many items have been used as commodity money such as natural scarce precious metals, cowry shells, barley, beads etc., as well as many other things that are thought of as having value. Modern money (and most ancient money) is essentially a token — in other words, an abstraction...
Tax Incidence ... In that all business taxes reduce profitability, and in accordance with the principles set out by the Physiocrats, they reduce the amount of rent that the business can pay and thus the incidence falls on the landowner... The land owner may be the business itself but the effect is to cut into that part of the revenue stream that consists of land rental value...
Head Tax (Canada) ... That was achieved through the same law that ended the head tax: the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, which stopped Chinese immigration entirely, albeit with certain exemptions for business owners and others...
Liability Insurance ... If a declaratory judgment is sought, the issue of the insurer's duty to defend will be resolved. If the insurer decides to defend, it has thus either waived its defense of no coverage (later estopped), or it must defend under a reservation of rights...
Marketing ... This replaces the previous definition, which still appears in the AMA's dictionary: "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders." It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
Money Supply ... Public and private sector analysts have long monitored changes in money supply because of its possible effects on the price level, inflation and the business cycle...
Indemnity ... While the event may be specified by the contract, the actions that must be taken to make the injured party "whole" again are largely fact-based and unknown to the parties until the event occurs, while the maximum liability is often expressly limited by the contract. A car insurance policy is an example of indemnification...
Capital Gains Tax In The United States ... Ordinary income rate Long-term capital gain rate Short-term capital gain rate Long-term gain on commercial buildings* Long-term gain on collectibles Long-term gain on certain small business stock 10% 0% 10% 10% 10% 10% 15% 0% 15% 15% 15% 15% 25% 15% 25% 25% 25% 25% 28% 15% 28% 25% 28% 28% 33% 15% 33% 25% 28% 28% 35% 15% 35% 25% 28% 28% * Unrecaptured Section 1250 gain... Applies to the portion of gains on depreciable real estate (structures used for business purposes) that has been or could have been claimed as depreciation... Small company stock capital gains Section 2011 of the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 exempts 100% of the taxes on capital gains for angel and venture capital investors on small business investments if held for 5 years...
Taxation In The United Kingdom ... Income tax was announced in Britain by William Pitt the Younger in his budget of December 1798 and introduced in 1799, to pay for weapons and equipment in preparation for the Napoleonic Wars. Pitt's new graduated (progressive) income tax began at a levy of 2 old pence in the pound (1/120) on incomes over £60 (£5,077 as of 2012), and increased up to a maximum of 2 shillings (10%) on incomes of over £200...
Marketing Research ... Marketing research is often partitioned into two sets of categorical pairs, either by target market: Consumer marketing research, and Business-to-business (B2B) marketing research Or, alternatively, by methodological approach: Qualitative marketing research, and Quantitative marketing research Consumer marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns. The field of consumer marketing research as a statistical science was pioneered by Arthur Nielsen with the founding of the ACNielsen Company in 1923...
Capital Gains Tax ... The sale of personal residential property is normally exempt from Capital Gains Tax, except for gains realized during any period in which the property was not being used as a persons personal residence (for example, being leased to other tenants) or portions attributable to business use...
Marketing Plan ... This "corporate mission" can be thought of as a definition of what the organization is, of what it does: "Our business is ."... This definition should not be too narrow, or it will constrict the development of the organization; a too rigorous concentration on the view that "We are in the business of making meat-scales," as IBM was during the early 1900s, might have limited its subsequent development into other areas...
Market Environment ... MICROENVIRONMENT The microenvironment refers to the forces that are close to the company and affect its ability to serve its customers. It includes the company itself, its suppliers, marketing intermediaries, customer markets, competitors, and publics...
Tariff ... The word comes from the Italian word tariffa "list of prices, book of rates," which is derived from the Arabic ta'rif "to notify or announce." Trade tariffs in the United States U. S. Historical Tariffs (Customs) Collections by Federal Government (All dollar amounts are in millions of U. S...
Real Estate ... It is a legal term in jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, United States of America, Dubai, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and The Bahamas. Real estate law is the body of regulations and legal codes which pertain to such matters under a particular jurisdiction and concerns such things as commercial and residential property ownership, development, and transactions...
Investment ... Investment is involved in many areas of the economy, such as business management and finance whether for households, firms, or governments...
Further Reading: Investing
Economic History Of The United States ... Throughout the colonies, people lived primarily on small farms and were self-sufficient. In the few small cities and among the larger plantations of South Carolina, and Virginia, some necessities and virtually all luxuries were imported in return for tobacco, rice, and indigo exports...
Financial Market ... There are both general markets (where many commodities are traded) and specialized markets (where only one commodity is traded). Markets work by placing many interested buyers and sellers, including households, firms, and government agences, in one "place", thus making it easier for them to find each other...
Economic History Of China (1949–present) ... Analysts estimated that investment accounted for about 25 percent of GNP in 1979, a rate surpassed by few other countries. Because of the comparatively low level of GNP, however, even this high rate of investment secured only a small amount of resources relative to the size of the country and the population...