What Is a Statutory Audit? A statutory audit is a legally required review of the accuracy of a company’s or government’s financial statements and records. The purpose of a statutory audit is to determine whether an organization provides a fair and accurate representation of its financial position by examining information such as bank balances, bookkeeping
What Is a Statutory Debt Limit? The statutory debt limit often referred to as the debt ceiling, was the limit set by Congress to the amount of debt that the U.S. government can take on. It also includes interest payments on existing debt. Once the government reaches the statutory debt limit, it cannot take on
What Is a Statutory Employee? The term statutory employee refers to an independent contractor who is treated as an employee for tax withholding purposes. A worker is considered a statutory employee as long as the employer and individual pay their share of Medicare and Social Security taxes and meet certain criteria. The employee is also
What Are Statutory Reserves? Statutory reserves are the funds that state insurance regulators require the insurance companies operating in their state to maintain at any given time. The purpose of statutory reserves is to help ensure that insurance companies have adequate liquidity available to honor all of the legitimate claims made by their policyholders. Key
What Is a Steady-State Economy? A steady-state economy is an economy structured to balance growth with environmental integrity. A steady-state economy seeks to find an equilibrium between production growth and population growth. In a steady state economy, the population would be stable with birth rates closely matching death rates and production rates similarly matching the
What Is a Stealth Address? A cryptocurrency stealth address is a one-time wallet address used to create more anonymity in cryptocurrency transactions. Because cryptocurrency wallet addresses are publicly available, transactions can be traced to that address. If your name or other information is somehow associated publicly with your wallet address, transactions can be traced to
What are Stealth Taxes? Stealth taxes are a type of tax levy. The defining feature of a stealth tax is that the formal taxpayer passes the cost of the tax along to others via higher expenses or lower payments, and the ultimate payer of the tax is unaware they shoulder the burden. Governments use stealth
What Is Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD)? Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is a drilling technique used to extract heavy crude oil which is buried too deep or otherwise burdensome to access. Its location makes it economically inefficient to mine using traditional methods. There are several variations of the SAGD process, but Butler, McNab, and Lo developed the
What Is the Steam-Oil Ratio? The steam-oil ratio is a metric used to assess the efficiency of thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques. Specifically, it relates to EOR methods that utilize steam injections to retrieve oil from underground reservoirs. A low steam-oil ratio shows that relatively little steam is required to produce a barrel of
What Are Step Costs? Step costs are expenses that are constant for a given level of activity, but increase or decrease once a threshold is crossed. Step costs change disproportionately when production levels of a manufacturer, or activity levels of any enterprise, increase or decrease. When depicted on a graph, these types of expenses will
