1.
Business
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A business is an organizational entity involved in the provision of goods and services to consumers. Businesses may also be social non-profit enterprises or state-owned public enterprises operated by governments with specific social, a business owned by multiple private individuals may form as an incorporated company or jointly organise as a partnership. Countries have different laws that may ascribe different rights to the business entities. The word business can refer to an organization or to an entire market sector or to the sum of all economic activity. Compound forms such as agribusiness represent subsets of the broader meaning. Businesses aim to maximize sales to have their income exceed their expenditures, resulting in a profit, the owner operates the business alone and may hire employees. A sole proprietor has unlimited liability for all obligations incurred by the business, partnership, A partnership is a business owned by two or more people. In most forms of partnerships, each partner has unlimited liability for the debts incurred by the business, the three most prevalent types of for-profit partnerships are, general partnerships, limited partnerships, and limited liability partnerships. Corporation, The owners of a corporation have limited liability and the business has a legal personality from its owners. Corporations can be either government-owned or privately owned and they can organize either for profit or as nonprofit organizations. A privately owned, for-profit corporation is owned by its shareholders, a privately owned, for-profit corporation can be either privately held by a small group of individuals, or publicly held, with publicly traded shares listed on a stock exchange. Cooperative, Often referred to as a co-op, a cooperative is a limited-liability business that can organize as for-profit or not-for-profit, a cooperative differs from a corporation in that it has members, not shareholders, and they share decision-making authority. Cooperatives are typically classified as either consumer cooperatives or worker cooperatives, cooperatives are fundamental to the ideology of economic democracy. In contrast, unincorporated businesses or persons working on their own are not as protected. Franchises, A franchise is a system in which entrepreneurs purchase the rights to open, franchising in the United States is widespread and is a major economic powerhouse. One out of retail businesses in the United States are franchised and 8 million people are employed in a franchised business. Real estate businesses sell, invest, construct and develop properties – including land, residential homes, retailers, wholesalers, and distributors act as middlemen and get goods produced by manufacturers to the intended consumers, they make their profits by marking up their prices. Most stores and catalog companies are distributors or retailers, transportation businesses such as railways, airlines, shipping companies that deliver goods and individuals to their destinations for a fee
2.
Corporation
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A corporation is a company or group of people authorized to act as a single entity and recognized as such in law. Early incorporated entities were established by charter, most jurisdictions now allow the creation of new corporations through registration. Corporations chartered in regions where they are distinguished by whether they are allowed to be for profit or not are referred to as for profit and not-for-profit corporations, there is some overlap between stock/non-stock and for profit/not-for-profit in that not-for-profit corporations are always non-stock as well. A for profit corporation is almost always a stock corporation, registered corporations have legal personality and are owned by shareholders whose liability is limited to their investment. Shareholders do not typically actively manage a corporation, shareholders instead elect or appoint a board of directors to control the corporation in a fiduciary capacity, in American English, the word corporation is most often used to describe large business corporations. In British English and in the Commonwealth countries, the company is more widely used to describe the same sort of entity while the word corporation encompasses all incorporated entities. In American English, the company can include entities such as partnerships that would not be referred to as companies in British English as they are not a separate legal entity. Despite not being human beings, corporations, as far as the law is concerned, are legal persons. Corporations can exercise human rights against real individuals and the state, Corporations can be dissolved either by statutory operation, order of court, or voluntary action on the part of shareholders. Corporations can even be convicted of offenses, such as fraud. However, corporations are not considered living entities in the way humans are. While not a corporation, this new type of entity became very attractive as an alternative for corporations not needing to issue stock, in Germany, the organization was referred to as Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung or GmbH. In the last quarter of the 20th Century this new form of organization became available in the United States and other countries. Since the GmbH and LLC forms of organization are technically not corporations they will not be discussed in this article, the word corporation derives from corpus, the Latin word for body, or a body of people. By the time of Justinian, Roman law recognized a range of corporate entities under the names universitas and these included the state itself, municipalities, and such private associations as sponsors of a religious cult, burial clubs, political groups, and guilds of craftsmen or traders. Such bodies commonly had the right to own property and make contracts, to receive gifts and legacies, to sue and be sued, private associations were granted designated privileges and liberties by the emperor. Entities which carried on business and were the subjects of rights were found in ancient Rome. In medieval Europe, churches became incorporated, as did local governments, such as the Pope, the point was that the incorporation would survive longer than the lives of any particular member, existing in perpetuity
3.
Rail transport
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Rail transport is a means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks. It is also referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a flat surface. Tracks usually consist of rails, installed on ties and ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels. Other variations are possible, such as slab track, where the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than road vehicles, so passenger. The operation is carried out by a company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facilities. Power is provided by locomotives which either draw electric power from a railway system or produce their own power. Most tracks are accompanied by a signalling system, Railways are a safe land transport system when compared to other forms of transport. The oldest, man-hauled railways date back to the 6th century BC, with Periander, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Rail transport blossomed after the British development of the steam locomotive as a viable source of power in the 19th centuries. With steam engines, one could construct mainline railways, which were a key component of the Industrial Revolution, also, railways reduced the costs of shipping, and allowed for fewer lost goods, compared with water transport, which faced occasional sinking of ships. The change from canals to railways allowed for markets in which prices varied very little from city to city. In the 1880s, electrified trains were introduced, and also the first tramways, starting during the 1940s, the non-electrified railways in most countries had their steam locomotives replaced by diesel-electric locomotives, with the process being almost complete by 2000. During the 1960s, electrified high-speed railway systems were introduced in Japan, other forms of guided ground transport outside the traditional railway definitions, such as monorail or maglev, have been tried but have seen limited use. The history of the growth, decline and restoration to use of transport can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used. The earliest evidence of a railway was a 6-kilometre Diolkos wagonway, trucks pushed by slaves ran in grooves in limestone, which provided the track element. The Diolkos operated for over 600 years, Railways began reappearing in Europe after the Dark Ages. The earliest known record of a railway in Europe from this period is a window in the Minster of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany
4.
Rolling stock
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The term rolling stock originally referred to any vehicles that move on a railway. It has since expanded to include the vehicles used by businesses on roadways. It usually includes both powered and unpowered vehicles, for locomotives, railroad cars, coaches, and wagons. Rolling stock is considered to be an asset, or close to it, since the value of the vehicle can be readily estimated. The term contrasts with fixed stock, which is a term for the track, signals, stations, other buildings, electric wires. In Great Britain, types of rolling stock were given code names and these codes were telegraphese, somewhat analogous to the SMS language of today. List of railway vehicles Great Western Railway telegraphic codes Great Western Railway wagons The dictionary definition of rolling stock at Wiktionary
5.
Berkshire Hathaway
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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. The company wholly owns GEICO, BNSF Railway, Lubrizol, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, FlightSafety International, Pampered Chef, and NetJets, and also owns 43. Berkshire Hathaway averaged a growth in book value of 19. 7% to its shareholders for the last 49 years, while employing large amounts of capital. In the early part of Buffetts career at Berkshire, he focused on investments in publicly traded companies. According to the Forbes Global 2000 list and formula, Berkshire Hathaway is the fourth largest public company in the world, Berkshire Hathaway traces its roots to a textile manufacturing company established by Oliver Chace in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Chace had previously worked for Samuel Slater, the founder of the first successful textile mill in America, Chace founded his first textile mill in 1806. In 1929 the Valley Falls Company merged with the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company established in 1889, in Adams, the combined company was known as Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. Hathaway had been successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, Hathaway was run by Seabury Stanton, whose investment efforts were rewarded with renewed profitability after the Depression, after the merger Berkshire Hathaway had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers with over $120 million in revenue and was headquartered in New Bedford. However, seven of those locations were closed by the end of the decade, in 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway after noticing a pattern in the price direction of its stock whenever the company closed a mill. Eventually, Buffett acknowledged that the business was waning and the companys financial situation was not going to improve. In 1964, Stanton made a tender offer of $11 1⁄2 per share for the company to buy back Buffetts shares. A few weeks later, Warren Buffett received the offer in writing. Buffett later admitted that this lower, undercutting offer made him angry, instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett decided to buy more of the stock to take control of the company and fire Stanton. However, this put Buffett in a situation where he was now majority owner of a business that was failing. Buffett initially maintained Berkshires core business of textiles, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry, Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company. In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company, in 1985, the last textile operations were shut down. Buffett claimed that had he invested that money directly in insurance businesses instead of buying out Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshires class A shares sold for $258,000
6.
Citigroup
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Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational investment banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking giant Citicorp, Citigroup ranks 3rd on the list of largest banks in the United States by assets and is one of the Big Four banks in the United States, alongside JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. In addition to U. S. money managers, its largest shareholders include Abu Dhabi, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the company is one of 24 primary dealers in United States Treasury securities. Citigroup has over 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries, Citigroup has 219,000 employees, although it had 357,000 employees at its height before the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Citigroup suffered huge losses during the crisis of 2007-2008 and was rescued in November 2008 in a massive stimulus package by the U. S. government. Citigroup was formed on October 9,1998, following the $140 billion merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group to create the worlds largest financial services organization. As such, the history dates back to the founding of. City Bank of New York was chartered by New York State on June 16,1812, serving a group of New York merchants, the bank opened for business on September 14 of that year, and Samuel Osgood was elected as the first President of the company. The companys name was changed to The National City Bank of New York in 1865 after it joined the new U. S. national banking system, and it became the largest American bank by 1895. The bank changed its name to The First National City Bank of New York in 1955, the bank introduced its First National City Charge Service credit card—popularly known as the Everything card and later to become MasterCard—in 1967. In 1976, under the leadership of CEO Walter B, wriston, First National City Bank was renamed as Citibank, N. A. Shortly afterward, the bank launched the Citicard, which pioneered the use of 24-hour ATMs, john S. Reed was elected CEO in 1984, and Citi became a founding member of the CHAPS clearing house in London. Travelers Group, at the time of merger, was a group of financial concerns that had been brought together under CEO Sandy Weill. Its roots came from Commercial Credit, a subsidiary of Control Data Corporation that was taken private by Weill in November 1986 after taking charge of the company earlier that year. Two years later, Weill mastered the buyout of Primerica—a conglomerate that had bought life insurer A L Williams as well as stock broker Smith Barney. The new company took the Primerica name, and employed a cross-selling strategy such that each of the entities within the parent company aimed to sell each others services and its non-financial businesses were spun off. With the acquisition, the group became Travelers Inc, Property & casualty and life & annuities underwriting capabilities were added to the business. Meanwhile, the distinctive Travelers red umbrella logo, which was acquired in the deal, was applied to all the businesses within the newly named organization
7.
IBM
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International Business Machines Corporation is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States, with operations in over 170 countries. The company originated in 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and was renamed International Business Machines in 1924, IBM manufactures and markets computer hardware, middleware and software, and offers hosting and consulting services in areas ranging from mainframe computers to nanotechnology. IBM is also a research organization, holding the record for most patents generated by a business for 24 consecutive years. IBM has continually shifted its business mix by exiting commoditizing markets and focusing on higher-value, also in 2014, IBM announced that it would go fabless, continuing to design semiconductors, but offloading manufacturing to GlobalFoundries. Nicknamed Big Blue, IBM is one of 30 companies included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average and one of the worlds largest employers, with nearly 380,000 employees. Known as IBMers, IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology, in the 1880s, technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of what would become International Business Machines. On June 16,1911, their four companies were amalgamated in New York State by Charles Ranlett Flint forming a fifth company, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company based in Endicott, New York. The five companies had 1,300 employees and offices and plants in Endicott and Binghamton, New York, Dayton, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, D. C. and Toronto. They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers, to tabulators and punched cards. Thomas J. Watson, Sr. fired from the National Cash Register Company by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint and, Watson joined CTR as General Manager then,11 months later, was made President when court cases relating to his time at NCR were resolved. Having learned Pattersons pioneering business practices, Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR onto CTRs companies and his favorite slogan, THINK, became a mantra for each companys employees. During Watsons first four years, revenues more than doubled to $9 million, Watson had never liked the clumsy hyphenated title of the CTR and in 1924 chose to replace it with the more expansive title International Business Machines. By 1933 most of the subsidiaries had been merged into one company, in 1937, IBMs tabulating equipment enabled organizations to process unprecedented amounts of data, its clients including the U. S. During the Second World War the company produced small arms for the American war effort, in 1949, Thomas Watson, Sr. created IBM World Trade Corporation, a subsidiary of IBM focused on foreign operations. In 1952, he stepped down after almost 40 years at the company helm, in 1957, the FORTRAN scientific programming language was developed. In 1961, IBM developed the SABRE reservation system for American Airlines, in 1963, IBM employees and computers helped NASA track the orbital flight of the Mercury astronauts. A year later it moved its headquarters from New York City to Armonk. The latter half of the 1960s saw IBM continue its support of space exploration, on April 7,1964, IBM announced the first computer system family, the IBM System/360
8.
Xerox
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Xerox Corporation /ˈzɪərɒks/ is an American global corporation that sells document solutions and services, and document technology products in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, though its largest population of employees is based around Rochester, New York, the company purchased Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion in early 2010. As a large developed company, it is placed in the list of Fortune 500 companies. Xerox completed the separation of Conduent Incorporated effective on Dec.31,2016, creating two market-leading, publicly- traded companies. In connection with the spin-off, Xerox received a transfer from Conduent of $1.8 billion. Xerox continues to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “XRX”, researchers at Xerox and its Palo Alto Research Center invented several important elements of personal computing, such as the desktop metaphor GUI, the computer mouse and desktop computing. These concepts were frowned upon by the board of directors. The concepts were adopted by Apple and, later, Microsoft, with the help of these innovations, Apple and Microsoft came to dominate the personal computing revolution of the 1980s, whereas Xerox was not a major player. Xerox was founded in 1906 in Rochester as The Haloid Photographic Company, in 1938 Chester Carlson, a physicist working independently, invented a process for printing images using an electrically charged photoconductor-coated metal plate and dry powder toner. However, it would more than 20 years of refinement before the first automated machine to make copies was commercialized, using a document feeder, scanning light. Wilson, credited as the founder of Xerox, took over Haloid from his father and he saw the promise of Carlsons invention and, in 1946, signed an agreement to develop it as a commercial product. Wilson remained as President/CEO of Xerox until 1967 and served as Chairman until his death in 1971, looking for a term to differentiate its new system, Haloid coined the term Xerography from two Greek roots meaning dry writing. Haloid subsequently changed its name to Haloid Xerox in 1958 and then Xerox Corporation in 1961, before releasing the 914, Xerox tested the market by introducing a developed version of the prototype hand-operated equipment known as the Flat-plate 1385. The 1385 was not actually a viable copier because of its speed of operation and it was little more than a high quality, commercially available plate camera mounted as a horizontal rostrum camera, complete with photo-flood lighting and timer. The glass film/plate had been replaced with an aluminum plate. Clever electrics turned this into a developing and reusable substitute for film. A skilled user could produce fast, paper and metal printing plates of a higher quality than almost any other method, having started as a supplier to the offset lithography duplicating industry, Xerox now set its sights on capturing some of offsets market share. The 1385 was followed by the first automatic xerographic printer, the Copyflo, the Copyflo was a large microfilm printer which could produce positive prints on roll paper from any type of microfilm negative
9.
Trade
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Trade, or commerce, involves the transfer of goods or services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. A network that allows trade is called a market, the original form of trade, barter, saw the direct exchange of goods and services for other goods and services. Barter is trading things without the use of money, later one side of the barter started to involve precious metals, which gained symbolic as well as practical importance. Modern traders generally negotiate through a medium of exchange, such as money, as a result, buying can be separated from selling, or earning. The invention of money greatly simplified and promoted trade, Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade, while trade between more than two traders is called multilateral trade. Trade exists due to the specialization and division of labor, in which most people concentrate on an aspect of production. As such, trade at prices between locations can benefit both locations. Trade originated with human communication in prehistoric times, trading was the main facility of prehistoric people, who bartered goods and services from each other before the innovation of modern-day currency. Peter Watson dates the history of commerce from circa 150,000 years ago. In the Mediterranean region the earliest contact between cultures were of members of the species Homo sapiens principally using the Danube river, at a time beginning 35–30,000 BCE, Trade is believed to have taken place throughout much of recorded human history. There is evidence of the exchange of obsidian and flint during the stone age, Trade in obsidian is believed to have taken place in Guinea from 17,000 BCE. The earliest use of obsidian in the Near East dates to the Lower, Trade in the stone age was investigated by Robert Carr Bosanquet in excavations of 1901. Trade is believed to have first begun in south west Asia, obsidian was traded at distances of 900 kilometres within the Mediterranean region. Trade in the Mediterranean during the Neolithic of Europe was greatest in this material, networks were in existence at around 12,000 BCE Anatolia was the source primarily for trade with the Levant, Iran and Egypt according to Zarins study of 1990. Melos and Lipari sources produced among the most widespread trading in the Mediterranean region as known to archaeology, the Sari-i-Sang mine in the mountains of Afghanistan was the largest source for trade of Lapis Lazuli. The material was most largely traded during the Kassite period of Babylonia beginning 1595 BCE, ebla was a prominent trading centre during the third millennia, with a network reaching into Anatolia and north Mesopotamia. Materials used for creating jewelry were traded with Egypt since 3000 BCE, long-range trade routes first appeared in the 3rd millennium BCE, when Sumerians in Mesopotamia traded with the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley. The Phoenicians were noted sea traders, traveling across the Mediterranean Sea, for this purpose they established trade colonies the Greeks called emporia
10.
Tax
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A tax is a financial charge or other levy imposed upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state to fund various public expenditures. A failure to pay, or evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labour equivalent, the legal definition and the economic definition of taxes differ in that economists do not regard many transfers to governments as taxes. For example, some transfers to the sector are comparable to prices. Examples include tuition at public universities and fees for utilities provided by local governments, governments also obtain resources by creating money and coins, through voluntary gifts, by imposing penalties, by borrowing, and by confiscating wealth. In modern taxation systems, governments levy taxes in money, but in-kind and corvée taxation are characteristic of traditional or pre-capitalist states, the method of taxation and the government expenditure of taxes raised is often highly debated in politics and economics. Tax collection is performed by a government agency such as the Canada Revenue Agency, when taxes are not fully paid, the state may impose civil penalties or criminal penalties on the non-paying entity or individual. The levying of taxes aims to raise revenue to fund governing and/or to alter prices in order to affect demand, States and their functional equivalents throughout history have used money provided by taxation to carry out many functions. A governments ability to raise taxes is called its fiscal capacity, when expenditures exceed tax revenue, a government accumulates debt. A portion of taxes may be used to service past debts, governments also use taxes to fund welfare and public services. These services can include education systems, pensions for the elderly, unemployment benefits, energy, water and waste management systems are also common public utilities. A tax effectively changes relative prices of products and they have therefore sought to identify the kind of tax system that would minimize this distortion. Governments use different kinds of taxes and vary the tax rates, historically, taxes on the poor supported the nobility, modern social-security systems aim to support the poor, the disabled, or the retired by taxes on those who are still working. A states tax system often reflects its communal values and the values of those in current political power. To create a system of taxation, a state must make choices regarding the distribution of the tax burden—who will pay taxes and how much they will pay—and how the taxes collected will be spent. In democratic nations where the public elects those in charge of establishing or administering the tax system, in countries where the public does not have a significant amount of influence over the system of taxation, that system may reflect more closely the values of those in power. All large businesses incur administrative costs in the process of delivering revenue collected from customers to the suppliers of the goods or services being purchased. Taxation is no different, the resource collected from the public through taxation is always greater than the amount which can be used by the government, the difference is called the compliance cost and includes the labour cost and other expenses incurred in complying with tax laws and rules
11.
Legal liability
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In law, liable means esponsible or answerable in law, legally obligated. Legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, the claimant is the one who seeks to establish, or prove, liability. Claimants can prove liability through a myriad of different theories, known as theories of liability, which theories of liability are available in a given case depends on nature of the law in question. Each theory of liability has certain conditions, or elements, that must be proven by the claimant before liability will be established, theories of liability can also be created by legislation. For example, under English law, with the passing of the Theft Act 1978, payment of damages usually resolves the liability. A given liability may be covered by insurance, in general, however, insurance providers only cover liabilities arising from negligent torts rather than intentional wrongs or breach of contract. In commercial law, limited liability is a form that shields its owners from certain types of liability. A limited liability form separates the owner from the business and this means that when a business is found liable in case, the owners are not themselves liable, rather, the business is. Thus, only the funds or property the owner have invested into the business are subject to that liability, if, for example, a limited liability business goes bankrupt, then the owner will not lose unrelated assets such as a personal residence. This is the model for larger businesses, in which a shareholder will only lose the amount invested. This is known as piercing the veil, manufacturers liability, a legal concept in most countries, reflects the fact that producers have a responsibility not to sell a defective product. Economists use the legal liability to describe the legal-bound obligation to pay debts
12.
Share (finance)
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In financial markets, share is a unit of account for various investments. It often means the stock of a corporation, but is used for collective investments such as mutual funds, limited partnerships. Corporations issue shares which are offered for sale to raise share capital, the owner of shares in the corporation is a shareholder of the corporation. A share is a unit of capital, expressing the ownership relationship between the company and the shareholder. The denominated value of a share is its value, and the total of the face value of issued shares represent the capital of a company. The income received from the ownership of shares is a dividend, the process of purchasing and selling shares often involves going through a stockbroker as a middle man. The liquidity of markets is a consideration as to whether a share is able to be sold at any given time. An actual sale transaction of shares between buyer and seller is usually considered to provide the best prima facie market indicator as to the value of shares at that particular time. Shares outstanding are those that are authorized by the government, issued by the company, the number of shares outstanding times the share price gives the market capitalization of the company, which if the trading price held constant would be sufficient to purchase the company. Treasury shares are authorized, issued, and held by the company itself, issued shares is the sum of shares outstanding and treasury shares. Shares authorized include both issued and unissued but authorized by the constitutional documents. Tax treatment of dividends varies between tax jurisdictions, for instance, in India, dividends are tax free in the hands of the shareholder, but the company paying the dividend has to pay dividend distribution tax at 12. 5%. There is also the concept of a dividend, which is not tax free. Further, Indian tax laws include provisions to stop dividend stripping, historically, investors were given share certificates as evidence of their ownership of shares. In modern times, certificates are not always given and ownership may be recorded electronically by a system such as CREST, a securities depository
