Turnover Tax, in socialist countries, this is the form of economic relations between enterprises and society as a whole concerning the planned distribution and redistribution of the net income of socialist society (see Net Income of Society) through immediate and direct centralisation of a part of it in the state budget. Turnover tax ensures the solidity and stability of the state budget, regular financing of the measures envisaged by the integral plan for the country’s economic and social development. It is mainly levied on consumer goods as a fixed part of the difference between the wholesale price of a product and its cost of production. The mechanism by which it is formed and used (obligatory payment, firmly fixed dates for and sizes of payments) makes it outwardly similar to the tax method for accumulating funds. In its nature and economic content, however, it is not a tax; it differs in principle from indirect taxes in capitalist countries (see Taxes), which are merely mark-ups on the price of a commodity and reduce the real incomes of the working people. Turnover tax is used not only as a source of revenue for the state budget, but also as a means for strengthening the cost accounting, regulation of the profitability of enterprises and the branches of the national economy. The state sets centrally the range of goods, the prices of which are to include turnover tax and the share of net income in them. Turnover tax is levied on products that are highly profitable. Turnover tax is paid by (1) state industrial enterprises (on goods they manufacture themselves and sell to purchasers at retail prices, minus trade discount, or at industrial wholesale prices); (2) purchasing organisations (on the sale, outside their own systems, of their own agricultural products and those of cooperative organisations); (3) wholesale organisations ( dealing with goods obtained from industry at enterprise wholesale prices and sold outside their systems at retail prices with a trade mark-down or at industrial wholesale prices). On certain operations trade organisations, consumer cooperatives and public catering enterprises also pay turnover tax.