0 a profit that is shown in financial records but has not yet been made by a company, especially because it is waiting for payments it is owed:
1 an increase in the value of an investment, etc. that appears in accounts, but that does not involve a real increase in cash, for example shares that have risen in value but that have not been sold:
When there is a take-over bid or reconstruction and the company does not voluntarily sell the securities it technically makes a paper profit.
It will show a paper profit because they will be valued up, but there will not be any money in the till.
On that day the stags made an actual profit—not a paper profit: but by selling their allocations they made an actual profit of £324 million.
As a result, they are all sitting pretty on a paper profit of nearly half a million pounds.
As freeholders, their paper profit on assets doubled, and in some cases trebled, overnight.
The income tax authorities tax that profit—which is, in most cases, largely a paper profit and not a cash one.
That is, of course, only a paper profit.
Even though one is earning a higher rate of paper profit, it is extraordinary how often one finds that one is not fully maintaining the value of the assets.
