Business FinancesQuestion 1116 of 1632

If a contractor underestimates his overhead rate when bidding, the most likely result is:

a.Bids come in high and he wins fewer jobs
b.Jobs are underpriced and the company loses money
c.His income taxes fall along with the reported profit
d.Overhead is absorbed by his subcontractors

Explanation

When the overhead rate built into the markup is too low, every bid is priced below the true cost of doing business: the job can show a profit on its own sheet while the company loses money once real overhead is paid. Bidding high is the result of the opposite error, over-recovering overhead. Lower taxes follow a lower profit but are a symptom, not the harm. And subcontractors price their own overhead into their own numbers; nothing shifts the general contractor's overhead onto them.

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