Countrywide's share price has dipped a bit since then, but BofA is still sitting on a paper profit.
Even if the share price rises sufficiently to produce a paper profit, we can never say that we are better off than we would have been had the government stayed out.
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That's because if you don't sell ISO stock by the end of the calendar year in which you exercised your options, the paper profit at the time of exercise is taxed in the AMT as ordinary income at rates of around 28%, regardless of whether you ever realize that paper profit.
For example, artists, illustrators, or story boarders who appreciate the convenience, speed and spontaneity of loosely sketching their ideas on paper could profit from the capabilities of Wacom's Inkling digital sketch pen.
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For Soap.com, Lore and Bharara will employ the same merchandising strategy that they used to grow Diapers.com: lure in customers with fast delivery on low-margin goods--like baby formula and now, toilet paper--and then profit from higher-margin products like car seats and, with Soap.com, vitamins and beauty products.
If digital photography sales bomb, Plaza Create will end up with a lot of costly assets that do nothing to boost its paper-thin 1.1% net profit margin.
On paper his business never made more than a small profit, but its meat products (burgers and Philly steaks) were rated as good quality by those who knew the brand.
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Over in print media, Janet Robinson , chief executive of The New York Times Co. (nyse: NYT - news - people ), plans to shrink the width of its flagship paper and cut 250 jobs in the face of a dismal profit picture.
Profit margins, at 1% to 5%, are as paper-thin as the finest carpaccio.
There's so much iffy paper still on the books that 2009 is more of a workout year with few major profit centers igniting and others, like the collateralized debt business, shrinking to insignificance.
The SIIA white paper also shows how suspected pirates are using Internet auctions to turn better than a 90 percent profit from sales of illegal software products, and how they are reaching thousands of new customers with little effort or cost.
Traders don't necessarily have to realize a profit in order to get a positive result, they just need to be able to show it on paper.
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