Operating surplus is a component of value added and GDP. The term "mixed income" is used when operating surplus cannot be distinguished from wage income, for example, in the case of sole proprietorships. Most of operating surplus will normally consist of gross profit income. In principle, it includes the (separately itemised) increase in the value of output inventories held, with or without a valuation adjustment reflecting average prices during the accounting period.
Operating surplus therefore does not necessarily refer to all gross profit income realized in an economy. Profits are also realized from all kinds of property transactions which do not involve new production, such as capital gains, and net profits are often also received from foreign countries or paid to foreign countries. In addition, many profits arising from the use of natural resources, land, and financial assets (in the form of interest income) will not be included.
Derivation of operating surplus in UNSNA
A simple definition of business profit would be "sales less costs", and the accounting derivation of operating surplus is similar (although the SNA concept of entrepreneurial income better matches what is thought of as business profits[1]). Starting off with Gross Output, expenditure on intermediate goods and services are deducted, to arrive at gross value added.
Value added may be stated gross (equal to the net output value, including consumption of fixed capital, i.e. depreciation charges) or net (excluding consumption of fixed capital). The net operating surplus (NOS) is thus the residual balancing item in the product account, obtained as follows:
less indirect taxes paid by producers, reduced by producer subsidies received (IT-SU)
equals net operating surplus (NOS)
In simple equations,
NOS=GV - (CE + (IT-SU) + CFC)
or
NOS=NV - (CE + (IT-SU)
Operating surplus can of course also be stated gross (GOS):
GOS=NOS + CFC
In this case, depreciation charges are included.
Exclusions
In UNSNA, "implicit (imputed) rents" on land owned by the enterprise and the "implicit (imputed) interest" chargeable on the use of the enterprise's own funds are excluded from operating surplus.
Operating surplus also excludes property incomes considered to be unrelated to value-adding production.
Mixed income
The category of operating surplus is applied to the whole economy, and therefore may include more than gross corporate profit income. For example, profit income by self-employed operators.
In UNSNA, "Mixed Income" refers to the balancing item of accounts for unincorporated enterprises owned by members of households, either individually or in partnership with others, in which the self-employed owners, or other members of their households, work and obtain income other than wages or salaries, which is included in operating surplus.
In practice, all unincorporated enterprises owned by households that are not quasi-corporations fall in this category, except for the "imputed rental value of owner-occupied housing" and paid domestic staff employed by households, an activity that is considered to generate no surplus.
Some countries separately itemise this mixed income in their accounts, other do not.
The effect of ownership relations on operating surplus in UNSNA
The size of total operating surplus is in theory not affected by whether the assets used in production are owned or rented by the enterprise, or whether assets owned by the enterprise and used in production are financed out of its own funds (or equity capital) or out of borrowed funds (or loan capital).
But if buildings, other structures, machinery or equipment are rented by an enterprise, the payments of rentals under an operating lease or similar lease are recorded as purchases of services (Intermediate consumption). Thus, the payment of a rental on a fixed asset reduces its gross value added, below what it would be, if the producer owned the asset.
The impact of this on net value added is offset to some extent by the fact that a tenant, or lessee, incurs no asset depreciation, whereas an owner would. But net value added will be lower when a fixed asset is rented, because the rental has to cover the lessor's operating and interest costs as well as asset depreciation. Thus, the size of net operating surplus will vary according to whether fixed assets are rented, or purchased.
Enterprises may furthermore invest surplus capital in financial assets or real estate assets, especially in times of uncertainty or high interest rates. Considerable property income may be received from such investments. In UNSNA, this property income does not constitute part of value added in production, and is therefore excluded from operating surplus (except for what is called the services of the financial, insurance and real estate industry).
If therefore an increasing amount of business income consists of property income rather than income from production, this will lower value added, and lower operating surplus.
Criticism of UNSNA concept
As stated, operating surplus is a residual item in national accounts of gross product. It is "analogous" to what is "left over" when a business deducts its costs from sales revenue in order to arrive at its profit total. However, the analogy is somewhat deceptive, insofar as the operating surplus in national accounts, as a component of value added, is not truly equal to real generic pre-tax profit receipts.
The main reason for that is simply that, in calculating this aggregate, various items are added and deducted from an initial surveyed (or tax-declared) gross profit figure in a way that is consistent with the concept of value added.
Or, to put it a different way, the definition of operating surplus is dependent on the general definition of Gross Output from production. To obtain a measure of value added in production, all those income flows considered to be unrelated to production (mainly, property income and transfer income) are excluded from the valuation of Gross Output. Therefore, this is one reason why the operating surplus cited in national accounts is likely to be lower than real generic pre-tax profit income. An additional problem is the practice of shifting the declaration of profit income to another country where taxes are lower, by means of various financial manipulations. Again that leads to an understatement of domestic profits.
The trend in operating surplus over time will normally be similar to the general trend in gross business profits, but in Marxian economics operating surplus is rejected as an adequate proxy for total gross profit or surplus value.
The main reason is that in Marxian economics the official concepts of Gross Output and value added are not accepted as an adequate definition of the value of production. Among other things, a fraction of profit, interest and rent income which is payable from the gross income of producing enterprises is excluded from value added in the official accounts, on the ground that it is unrelated to production. Marxian economists however argue that fraction is part of the value of production and the value product, insofar it has to be paid out of current revenues of producing enterprises.
This Marxian interpretation implies a somewhat different view of the real cost structure of production, and the real composition of product values, and to obtain alternative measures, the official accounts must be substantially reaggregated to make explicit the sources and receipts of income from salaries, profits, interest, rent, taxes and social insurance levies, subsidies, royalties and fees, and their contribution to the valuation of gross product (see also value product).
In the Marxian view, obtaining generic profit income from sales is precisely the prime motivator of capitalist business activity, and therefore to present this income as a "generic residual balancing item" in national accounts without making its components explicit does no justice to the real economic relations involved.
In economics and accounting, fixed capital is any kind of real, physical asset that is used repeatedly in the production of a product. It contrasts with circulating capital such as raw materials, operating expenses and the like. It was first theoretically analyzed in some depth by the economist David Ricardo.
An income statement or profit and loss account is one of the financial statements of a company and shows the company's revenues and expenses during a particular period.
A company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization is an accounting measure calculated using a company's earnings, before interest expenses, taxes, depreciation, and amortization are subtracted, as a proxy for a company's current operating profitability.
The organic composition of capital (OCC) is a concept created by Karl Marx in his theory of capitalism, which was simultaneously his critique of the political economy of his time. It is a special concept derived from his more basic concepts of 'value composition of capital' and 'technical compositon of capital'. He discussed it in detail in Capital Vol. 1, chapter 25. The 'technical compositon of capital' measures the relation between the elements of constant capital and variable capital. It is 'technical' because no valuation is here involved. In contrast, the 'value composition of capital' is the ratio between the value of the elements of constant capital involved in production and the value of the labor. Marx found that the special concept of 'organic composition of capital' was sometimes useful in analysis, since it assumes that the relative values of all the elements of capital are constant.
In economics and finance, the profit rate is the relative profitability of an investment project, a capitalist enterprise or a whole capitalist economy. It is similar to the concept of rate of return on investment.
In business, the difference between the sale price and the production cost of a product is the unit profit. In economics, the sum of the unit profit, the unit depreciation cost, and the unit labor cost is the unit value added. Summing value added per unit over all units sold is total value added. Total value added is equivalent to revenue less intermediate consumption. Value added is a higher portion of revenue for integrated companies, e.g., manufacturing companies, and a lower portion of revenue for less integrated companies, e.g., retail companies. Total value added is very closely approximated by compensation of employees plus earnings before taxes. The first component is a return to labor and the second component is a return to capital. In national accounts used in macroeconomics, it refers to the contribution of the factors of production, i.e., capital and labor, to raising the value of a product and corresponds to the incomes received by the owners of these factors. The national value added is shared between capital and labor, and this sharing gives rise to issues of distribution.
In business, operating margin—also known as operating income margin, operating profit margin, EBIT margin and return on sales (ROS)—is the ratio of operating income to net sales, usually presented in percent.
Consumption of fixed capital (CFC) is a term used in business accounts, tax assessments and national accounts for depreciation of fixed assets. CFC is used in preference to "depreciation" to emphasize that fixed capital is used up in the process of generating new output, and because unlike depreciation it is not valued at historic cost but at current market value ; CFC may also include other expenses incurred in using or installing fixed assets beyond actual depreciation charges. Normally the term applies only to producing enterprises, but sometimes it applies also to real estate assets.
Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) is a macroeconomic concept used in official national accounts such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA), National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) and the European System of Accounts (ESA). The concept dates back to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) studies of Simon Kuznets of capital formation in the 1930s, and standard measures for it were adopted in the 1950s. Statistically it measures the value of acquisitions of new or existing fixed assets by the business sector, governments and "pure" households less disposals of fixed assets. GFCF is a component of the expenditure on gross domestic product (GDP), and thus shows something about how much of the new value added in the economy is invested rather than consumed.
The value product (VP) is an economic concept formulated by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy during the 1860s, and used in Marxian social accounting theory for capitalist economies. Its annual monetary value is approximately equal to the netted sum of six flows of income generated by production:
Faux frais of production is a concept used by classical political economists and by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to "incidental operating expenses" incurred in the productive investment of capital, which do not themselves add new value to output. In Marx's social accounting, the faux frais are a component of constant capital, or alternately are funded by a fraction of the new surplus value.
Intermediate consumption is an economic concept used in national accounts, such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA), the US National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA) and the European System of Accounts (ESA).
Compensation of employees (CE) is a statistical term used in national accounts, balance of payments statistics and sometimes in corporate accounts as well. It refers basically to the total gross (pre-tax) wages paid by employers to employees for work done in an accounting period, such as a quarter or a year.
Net output is an accounting concept used in national accounts such as the United Nations System of National Accounts (UNSNA) and the NIPAs, and sometimes in corporate or government accounts. The concept was originally invented to measure the total net addition to a country's stock of wealth created by production during an accounting interval. The concept of net output is basically "gross revenue from production less the value of goods and services used up in that production". The idea is that if one deducts intermediate expenditures from the annual flow of income generated by production, one obtains a measure of the net new value in the new products created.
Capital formation is a concept used in macroeconomics, national accounts and financial economics. Occasionally it is also used in corporate accounts. It can be defined in three ways:
In economics, gross value added (GVA) is the measure of the value of goods and services produced in an area, industry or sector of an economy. "Gross value added is the value of output less the value of intermediate consumption; it is a measure of the contribution to GDP made by an individual producer, industry or sector; gross value added is the source from which the primary incomes of the SNA are generated and is therefore carried forward into the primary distribution of income account."
A net value is the resultant amount after accounting for the sum or difference of two or more variables.
The annual United Kingdom National Accounts records and describes economic activity in the United Kingdom and as such is used by government, banks, academics and industries to formulate the economic and social policies and monitor the economic progress of the United Kingdom. It also allows international comparisons to be made. The Blue Book is published by the UK Office for National Statistics alongside the United Kingdom Balance of Payments – The Pink Book.
"Surplus value" is a translation of the German word "Mehrwert", which simply means value added, and is cognate to English "more worth". Surplus-value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and labour power. It is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. Conventionally, value-added is equal to the sum of gross wage income and gross profit income. However, Marx uses the term Mehrwert to describe the yield, profit or return on production capital invested, i.e. the amount of the increase in the value of capital. Hence, Marx's use of Mehrwert has always been translated as "surplus value", distinguishing it from "value-added". According to Marx's theory, surplus value is equal to the new value created by workers in excess of their own labor-cost, which is appropriated by the capitalist as profit when products are sold.
Taxes has an important part in the Moroccan economy. The taxes are levied by the government and the organization responsible for tax policy on Morocco is called the “General Management of Taxes”.
References
2008 UNSNA standard
1993 UNSNA standard
Edgar Z. Palmer, The meaning and measurement of the national income, and of other social accounting aggregates.
M. Yanovsky, Anatomy of Social Accounting Systems.
Anwar Shaikh & Ahmet Ertugrul Tonak, Measuring the Wealth of Nations. CUP.
Paul Studenski, The Income of Nations; Theory, Measurement, and Analysis: Past and Present. New York: New York University Press, 1958.
Zoltan Kenessey (Ed.), The Accounts of Nations, Amsterdam IOS, 1994.
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