Glossary

Whether something is a provision or a footnote is management’s judgement — and one reduces profit.

How much of the recognised problem has already been paid for out of past profits. It is not immune to write-off policy: taking a fully-provided loan off both lines removes an equal amount from a smaller numerator and a larger denominator, which drags the ratio down.

The open is fixed and the extremes only widen, but the close keeps moving — so the body can flip colour and a wick can vanish entirely before the bell. Every candlestick pattern is defined on closed candles.

Nobody restates anything, so the whole effect lands in one year’s growth rate while both years remain individually correct. The revision itself moves no cash.

You want it stable and low. A spike can consume the whole of a bank's operating profit in a single year, which is why bank earnings swing so violently.

A container rather than a single item, and it excludes interest capitalised into an asset under construction. Dividing it by borrowings without reading its note gives a rate the company was never offered.

The line past which a lender's posture changes from collection to enforcement. It is also the gate to the statutory power to sell a mortgaged asset.

The rule that creates the announcements feed. It is why a resignation, an order or a board decision reaches a free public page before it reaches the news.

The obligation sits on the buyer, who is usually an individual with no experience of deducting anything. Where the seller is a non-resident a different provision applies entirely, at a much higher rate and needing a TAN.

It catches ordinary family arrangements. An informal loan settled in cash exposes both sides to a penalty equal to the amount, which is an expensive way to do somebody a favour.

It penalises the receiver, not the payer, in an amount equal to the sum received. That single design choice is why the jeweller, hospital and builder simply decline the cash — you meet the rule as a refusal, not a notice.

After three years the argument is over on any ground, including fraud. The detail that catches families is the starting point: a lapse and revival restarts the clock.

The first rung of a long ladder. First-authority demands are frequently reduced on appeal, which is why large ones sit in contingent liabilities rather than as provisions.

Stamp duty is charged on the higher of the documented price and this notified value, and the income tax provisions for immovable property key off the same figure — so in a weak local market duty and tax can be computed on a price nobody is actually paying.

The phrase is used to make a fall feel provisional, by people who in the same conversation describe a gain as booked. One rule applied in whichever direction is more comfortable.

They cost a lender twice: the provision rises, and interest is thereafter recognised on the amount net of that provision, so income falls at the same moment the charge goes up.