ACCOUNTING PROFIT: The difference between a business's revenue and it's accounting expenses. This is the profit that's listed on a company's balance sheet, appears periodically in the financial sector of the newspaper, and is reported to the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes. It frequently has little relationship to a company's economic profit because of the difference between accounting expense and the opportunity cost of production. Some accounting expense is not an opportunity cost and some opportunity cost is does not show up as an accounting expenses.

     See also | business | profit | economic profit | normal profit | entrepreneurship | accounting cost | opportunity cost | economic cost | economic rent | externality | Internal Revenue Service | tax |

ACCOUNTING PROFIT, AmosWEB GLOSS*arama, http://www.AmosWEB.com, AmosWEB LLC, 2000-2025. [Accessed: July 9, 2025].

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An actual outlay or expenses incurred in the production of a good that shows up in a firm's accounting statements and records. Accounting cost is an explicit payment (that is, money changing hands) incurred by a firm. Accounting cost, while very important to accountants, company CEOs, shareholders, and the Internal Revenue Service, is only minimally important to economists. The reason is that economists are more interested in economic cost (also called opportunity cost), which is the value of foregone production.

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