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As well as Jeff's excellent summary of the situation, I suspect that the average diamond is not that profitable. Remember only a tiny number of the prospectors for gold, gems and other minerals have ever become rich. Only the headline-grabbing super-gems have great value. Also, it's what's called "added value" that transforms most raw materials into expensive goods - the middlemen who trade them, the diamond cutters in Amsterdam and elsewhere who turn them into industrial tools or expensive jewels, the people who sell them to their final user, all add their cut. All these individuals paid individual taxes. Over to you, Marika, to track them down. Good luck! Kathy > Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 18:00:02 +0100 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: company profits > To: [log in to unmask] > > Thank you, oh knowledgeable Jeff. > > But why did Rhodes' company never pay a dividend? Difficult to believe he did not make a lot of money. Or the other companies, for that matter. After all, they paid almost nothing for the labourers extracting gold, etc etc.... so their main cost would have been shipping it all back to the UK - and transporting it to the coast in Africa.... > > -----Original Message----- > From: The Black and Asian Studies Association [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Susan Bolton / Jeffrey Green > Sent: 17 June 2015 16:17 > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: company profits > > It may be important to distinguish between a firm and a company. The latter has a separate legal existence and various Company Acts (from the 1860s) set out what obligations were. Each company had to have Articles of Association and they had to be deposited with a registrar. A company could not legally act in any way not defined in its articles. In other words, if the Articles said the company existed to trade in fish, then any debts met when trading in wool were not enforceable. > > Firms were a more flexible form of enterprise, generally linked to the people who ran them. > > Victorian legislation attempted to clarify many decades of case law. > > Beware of "huge profits". As far as I know, the mighty Cecil Rhodes's British South Africa Company which ran Rhodesia (Zambia, Zimbabwe) for a quarter of a century, never paid a dividend. The Imperial British East Africa Company (ran Kenya into the 1890s) went bankrupt. > > If the enterprise was a limited company then there would be an annual shareholders' meeting and the financial pages would report on the accounts. If the enterprise decided to expand by issuing more shares, the advertising of that would include a summary of the anticipated profits and probably of early activities. > > I always found amusement in reading these adverts in London weeklies such as "West Africa" and "South Africa", and the claims that some huge mineral deposit was there, just waiting to be dug out, somewhere in Africa. A friend had a engraved share certificate, showing a narrow gauge railway and hard working Africans (of course) for some project that left little mark. > > Jeff Green (I worked for the Paris-based Ottoman Bank, remember!). > > > ======================================== > Message Received: Jun 17 2015, 01:47 PM > From: "Kathleen Chater" > To: [log in to unmask] > Cc: > Subject: Re: company profits > > Complicated subject - and there's obviously no simple answer. You'd need to look at the place and research the period and the law at the time. Have you looked at Wiki? Always a good starting point > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_the_United_Kingdom > > You'll see that in the past it was mainly individuals who were taxed, either directly or indirectly on what they bought, like wine, or used, as in the case of land. > > Have you looked on the TNA website to see if there's a factsheet about taxes? > > Kathy > > Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 11:45:17 +0100 > From: [log in to unmask] > Subject: company profits > To: [log in to unmask] > > Does anyone know if the British companies which made huge profits out of the colonies in the ‘West Indies’ and in Africa ever paid any tax? Presumably if they did, it would have been in England…. Marika