Prosperous Boomer › A-Z index
A-Z index
24 entries written so far, grouped by first letter. Terms with their own page link to it; the rest are defined inside the topic that frames them.
A
- Accrual basisRecording income and cost when they arise, not when money moves.BOOKKEEPING
B
- Balance sheetA statement of what is owned and owed at a single moment.ACCOUNTS
- Basis periodThe stretch of trading whose result is assigned to a given tax year.CYCLES
C
- Cash flow statementA statement explaining how the bank balance moved and why.ACCOUNTS
D
- DepreciationSpreading the cost of a long-lived item across the years it is used.ACCOUNTS
- Direct taxA tax charged on the person or business that is meant to bear it.PURPOSE
- Double-entry bookkeepingRecording every transaction twice so the books check themselves.BOOKKEEPING
E
- ExciseA duty charged on goods made inside a country rather than imported.HISTORY
H
- HypothecationThe unusual practice of tying one tax to one named area of spending.PURPOSE
I
- Income taxA charge on what a person or business earns in a period.HISTORY
- Indirect taxA tax collected from one party but expected to be passed on to another.PURPOSE
- InstalmentA payment made during a period against a liability not yet finalised.CYCLES
J
- JournalThe chronological record: transactions in the order they happened.BOOKKEEPING
L
- LedgerThe categorical record: transactions gathered under headings.BOOKKEEPING
P
- Profit and loss accountA statement of what was earned and spent across a period.ACCOUNTS
- Progressive taxationA structure where the average rate rises as the amount taxed rises.PURPOSE
R
- ReconciliationComparing the internal record against an outside statement.BOOKKEEPING
- ReturnThe formal declaration describing a calculated liability for a period.CYCLES
T
- Tax yearThe defined period against which a charge on income or profit is assessed.CYCLES
- TitheAn early fixed share of produce, typically a tenth, paid to church or lord.HISTORY
- Trial balanceA total of all debits against all credits, used to detect errors.BOOKKEEPING
V
- Value-added taxA spending tax collected in fragments at each stage of production.HISTORY
W
- WithholdingTax taken out of a payment before the recipient ever sees it.PURPOSE
- Working capitalThe short-term money tied up in running the business day to day.ACCOUNTS
How entries are written
Entries here explain ideas in plain words. Each one starts with a short definition, then a longer explanation of how the thing works and where it came from, and stops there.
The writing describes mechanisms and their history rather than the rules of any particular country or any particular year. No rate, threshold, deadline or filing requirement is quoted anywhere on the site, because those differ from place to place and change from year to year, and a figure written once and left standing is worse than no figure at all.
Nothing here is guidance for a particular person's affairs. Where numbers appear they are round illustrations chosen to make an arithmetic relationship visible, and they are labelled as such.