A Cost-Benefit Analysis Village Hardware is a retail store selling hardware, small appliances, and sporting goods. The business follows a policy of selling all merchandise at exactly twice the amount of its cost to the store and uses a periodic inventory system. At year-end. the following information is taken from the accounting records: Net sales... $580,000 Inventory, January 1............... 58,000 Purchases...... $297,250 A physical count indicates merchandise costing $49,300 is on hand at December 31. Instructions a. Prepare a partial income statement showing computation of the gross profit for the year. b. On seeing your income statement, the owner of the store makes the following comment: Inventory shrinkage losses are really costing me. If it weren't for shrinkage losses, the store's gross profit would be 50 percent of net sales. I'm going to hire a security