Maya Forstater

Nup not going to do it! :)

Nope me neither Paddy! I think the point is 0 profit in early years looks OK. Gets more as mine gets older. But then commodity price volatility etc can push back into losses. And '0 tax bill' may not mean losses but result of carried interest as w Oyu Tolgoi

Yes yes yes it's all very complicated but 1. If the difference between genuine losses and profit shifting is so fundamentally unknowable then the whole endeavour is meaningless and we might as well never speak of it again and ...

... there's nothing wrong with taking an average over a heterogeneous population, nor can I believe you literary have no prior concerning the prevalence of bad practice.

Nah its just the wrong question. Eg a mining Co can have legitimate zero profits in a year, but might still be be overstating costs (... which will have impact on taxes at some point down the road).

That's just complicating the ways in which things can work. The end result is N observation of reported losses. What % genuine. You're only being asked to choose one of 4 buckets.

Imagine an omniscient God produced the answer. Your options are 1 claim God couldn't, in which case I expect to see you never use the word profit again other than to argue it's an empty concept, or 2 say you can't guess, in which case I expect to see you never raise an eyebrow ..

I could make a guess, but absent specific and detailed data it would be no more than that. My guess would be that any company reporting more than 5 consecutive years of losses should be investigated further.