Learn About Net Income: Definition, How to Calculate Net Income, and the Difference Between Net Income and Gross Income

Sometimes referred to colloquially as a business’s bottom line, net income is all profits a business receives after all expenses have been subtracted, including administrative costs, taxes, cost of goods sold, interest, etc.

• Net income is a baseline tool for evaluating a business’s economic health and long term viability.
• It’s very important for business owners to track their operating income and profit margin by calculating net income at regular intervals.
• Understanding net income and how it’s different from other measures of revenue is very important to running a solvent and successful business.

To calculate net income, you need to determine your business’s net revenue and then subtracting total expenses. This means you need to calculate all business expenses including employee gross pay, administrative expenses, utility bills, etc. All of this is recorded in an income statement.

The formula for net income is:

Total revenue - (cost of goods + operating expenses + depreciation + taxes)

Calculating net income is a vitally important number for taking stock of a business’s overall viability and health.

• Small business owners need to carefully track their net earnings to better understand their net profit margin and to determine how they can generate higher revenues.
• Some business owners expect to operate at a loss, especially in the early years of a business. Determining net income means that they can still have a precise idea of exactly how much of a net loss they are expecting and how long they expect to sustain losses.
• As an individual, changes in net income could affect a variety of other financial considerations from how much you put into a savings account to how you structure your retirement plan.

In personal finance, net income is often referred to colloquially as take-home pay, or the amount of money an individual is paid after taxes and other deductions are taken out of their gross income. (Gross income is the amount of money you get paid before any deductions.)

It’s important to keep track of your cumulative total income and track retained earnings on a balance sheet for filing your tax returns.

Net income refers to an individual’s or business’s income after all expenses have been paid. As such, net income will invariably be a lower number than gross income for that same person or business.

When it comes to taxes paid in the United States (whether to the IRS or state agencies), taxable income tends to be based on some form of net income, rather than gross intake that doesn’t account for expenses. This can affect the amount owed in capital gains taxes, social security taxes, and more.

Factors that can make one’s net income lower than one’s gross income include:

• Cost of living expenses
• Contributions to retirement accounts (such as an IRA)
• Health insurance premiums
• Payments on student loan interest
• Upkeep of rental property

Such expenses are documented on a tax return form and will affect what the government considers to be a person’s or business’s total taxable income for the year.

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