That depends on how you calculate profit. Amazon has growing assets which is profit even if they don't pay taxes on their profit.

This is not limited to physical assets, if you do R&D and produce a valuable drug patent then you don't need to pay taxes on that value yet, but actual value was created.

Stock is at best a proxy for what you actually care about.

You're mixing concepts:

* Profits = Revenue - Expenses

* Assets + Liabilities = Equity

New asset purchases are expenses and not profits. Equity (total market cap) is an estimate of the value of the company, including assets and outstanding liabilities.

If you rent out a property for 30 years at same rate as your total expenses including mortgage payments then sell it after that point your profit is not actually zero for 30 years then the full value of the house on the final day. There are actually a lot of different ways you can record such a transaction each of which have different trade-offs.

This is also why asset depreciation is considered an expense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation However, it may also be recorded as income with the initial purchase being considered an expense.

PS: There are an insane number of useful ways to run your personal books, and a few legally required methods in various situations. But, IMO your goal should be match the underlying economic situation of your enterprise not simply move numbers around based on an abstract formula.

Assets - (External) Liabilities = Equity