I’ve been listening to Aquired recently (podcast about company origin stories) and when talking about privately owned companies (for instance, the recently Mars Inc. episode) they always do back of napkin estimated earnings because the company is private, which apparantly means they don’t have to disclose earnings.
But in my country, Denmark, every company earning above 50.000 DKK (=7853 USD) has to disclose earnings. I believe this is for price discovery purposes, so that other entrepreneurs can see how much margin companies have and try to compete if they earn too much money, which is an important part of capitalism, right?
How come this is not required in USA, the “home” of capitalism? If I’m not mistaken of course, my apologies if so.
A startlingly high fraction of US businesses rely on a combination of tax evasion, accounting fraud, and wage theft to make the business work. Everyone knows this, but it’s still sufficient reason to keep reporting minimal.
To pay for the owners’ lavish lifestyles.
The people making too much money can always make less and the rest of us would be better off for it.