Truth in Reporting --Dickeson

How did we get into this condition. . .or are we? It all depends on the assumptions you make and how you apply them. Goodness knows you've got to make a lot of assumptions.

First, there's the difficulty of measuring when there's more than one business in the firm. The report is premised on "operating" income of a printer. Suppose you have a profitable publishing firm, as well. How do you allocate many of the general, administrative and sales expenses? How many of those expenses were "operational" to printing alone between the two operations? You make assumptions, some of which may be true, but well wide of the actual results.