William Aberhart (nicknamed Bible Bill) was a Canadian politician. He was born in 1878 at Huron County, Ontario and died in 1943. After working as a teacher and a clergyman in 1935 he became a member of the Alberta legislature, forming the Canadian Social Credit Party and becoming Premier in the same year. He campaigned for legislation to give each Albertan a $5 a monthdividend from the province's natural resources, but was blocked by the federal government. Research William Aberhart
In arithmetic, division is the dividing of a number or quantity into any parts assigned. It is one of the four fundamental rules, the object of which is to find how often one number is contained in another. The number to be divided is the dividend, the number which divides is the divisor, and the result of the division is the quotient. Division is the converse of multiplication.
In business an accumulated dividend is a dividend that has not been paid to a company's preference shareholders. It is, therefore, shown as a liability in its accounts. Research Accumulated Dividend
In business, accumulating shares are ordinary shares issued to holders of ordinary shares in a company, instead of a dividend. Accumulating shares are a way of replacing annual income with capital growth; they avoid income tax but not capital-gains tax. Usually tax is deducted by the company from the declared dividend, in the usual way, and the net dividend is then used to buy additional ordinary shares for the shareholder. Research Accumulating shares
Advance corporation tax (ACT) is a feature of the imputation system of taxation that has applied in Britain since 1972. When dividends (or other distributions) are made by UK companies to their shareholders, the companies must account to the Inland Revenue for advance corporation tax at a rate that would equal the basic rate of income tax on a figure consisting of the distribution plus the ACT. Thus, if the basic rate of income tax is 30%, the rate of ACT would be 3/7, so that a dividend of œ700 with its ACT of 3/7 x œ 700 = œ300 would total œ1000, on which the tax at 30% would be œ300 (the amount of the ACT). The ACT thus paid serves two purposes: (1) it is a payment on account of the individual shareholder's personal income tax on the dividend, and (2) for the paying company it constitutes a payment on account of that company' s corporation tax for the period in which the dividend is paid. There are limits to the amount of ACT that may be set against corporation tax liabilities for any given period. Unrelieved ACT may
also be carried backwards or forwards or surrendered to other companies. Research Advance Corporation Tax
A shares are ordinary shares in a company that usually do not carry voting rights. Non-voting shares are issued by a company when it wishes to raise additional capital without committing itself to a fixed dividend and without diluting control of the company. They are, however, unpopular with institutional investors (who like to have a measure of control with their investments) and are therefore now rarely issued. Research A Shares
The capital-redemption reserve is a reserve fund required to be created by the UK Companies Act (1985) when shares are redeemed out of retained profits and not out of a new issue of share capital. The reserve is created by making a transfer out of the profit and loss account to a specially designated account, the capital- redemption reserve account. Amounts held in this account cannot be distributed to shareholders by way of dividend, although they may be used to make bonus issues of share capital. The purpose of the reserve is to ensure that the company's capital is not diluted by the redemption of some of the shares. Research Capital-Redemption Reserve
Cooperative Societies are associations of individuals for mutual assistance in industrial or commercial objects. One form of cooperative societies is that of an association of men belonging to some trade or industry for the purpose of carrying it on entirely by their own efforts, and thus securing all the profits of their labours to themselves; but societies of the latter kind have been established very widely in Great Britain, one of the first and most successful of them being the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers' Society, which commenced in 1844. This, like others, was conducted on the principle of dividing the surplus profits among the members alone in proportion to their purchases, after a certain fixed percentage has been deducted for interest on the capital. It provided its customers with butcher-meat, groceries, boots and shoes, drapery, etc and a part of the profits was devoted to educational purposes. Most of the stores sold goods to non-members, and by a system of tickets it was arranged that the latter received a dividend in proportion to the amount of their purchases. Research Cooperative Societies
A debenture is a common form of long-term loan taken by a company. It is usually a loan repayable at a fixed date, although some debentures are irredeemable securities; these are sometimes called perpetual debentures. Most debentures also pay a fixed rate of interest, and this interest must be paid before a dividend is paid to shareholders. Most debentures are also secured on the borrower's assets, although some, known as naked debentures or unsecured debentures, are not. In the USA debentures are usually unsecured, relying only on the reputation of the borrower.
In a secured debenture, the bond may have a fixed charge (i.e. a charge over a particular asset) or a floating charge. If debentures are issued to a large number of people (for example in the form of debenture stock or loan stock) trustees may be appointed to act on behalf of the debenture holders. There may be a premium on redemption and some debentures are convertible, i.e. they can be converted into ordinary shares on a specified date, usually at a specified price. The advantage of debentures to companies is that they carry lower interest rates than, say, overdrafts and are usually repayable a long time into the future. For an investor, they are usually saleable on a stock exchange and involve less risk than equities. Research Debenture
A dividend is a distribution of part of the earnings of a company to its shareholders. The dividend is normally expressed as an amount per share on the par value of the share. Thus a 15% dividend on a œ1 share will pay 15p. However, investors are usually more interested in the dividend yield, i.e. the dividend expressed as a percentage of the share value; thus if the market value of these œ1 shares is now œ5, the dividend yield would be 1/5 × 15% = 3%. The size of the dividend payment is determined by the board of directors of a company, who must decide how much to pay out to shareholders and how much to retain in the business; these amounts may vary from year to year. In the UK it is usual for companies to pay a dividend every six months, the largest portion (the final dividend) being announced at the company's AGM together with the annual financial results. A smaller interim dividend usually accompanies the interim statement of the company's affairs, six months before the AGM. In the USA dividends are usually paid quarterly. Research Dividend
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research William Aberhart
