Gross Profit

Gross Profit 

in socialist countries a form of display of net income, a value expression of the overall financial result of the activity of an enterprise—that is, the monetary expression of the part of an enterprise’s revenues which it retains after deducting all expenditures. Gross profit is a synthetic index of the overall result of the economic activity of an enterprise. The principal source of the creation of gross profit is labor newly expended by employees of the enterprise on the production of output. Gross profit expresses in monetary form the surplus product and in part the necessary product created by the enterprise. In practice the amount of gross profit is established as the difference between the revenue of an enterprise from output sold at wholesale prices and the expenditures on its production and marketing. In addition, gross profit takes into account the results of the so-called nonselling activity of an enterprise (net financial results in the management of the housing and communal economy, in services of a nonindustrial character, in clearing debtors’ and creditors’ liabilities, and so forth). Gross profit serves as the basis for determining net profit and as the source of setting up all funds of an enterprise. As a result of the redistribution of profit between enterprises and industries through the mechanism of prices (the deviation of prices from cost and so forth), gross profit does not always characterize precisely the true efficiency of an enterprise.

A. M. EREMIN