Do you think large dollar stores are faking or cheating their profit margin numbers?

This is like me showing you my scorecard after cheating at golf, and saying "do you think the scorecard is fake?".

Real profit margin. Achieved through deceit. This is vilainy.

I mean, they are cheating customers on the item price, so it goes to show they'll do illegal stuff without care, so yea, why not.

how happy do you think the shareholders would be about that?

"We get more money and they keep coming back?, carry on"

I don't think it is, so maybe you can help me draw the parallels.

Both groups have the same profit margin (golf score). One group is achieving it by deceive customers (cheating at golf) while the other is achieving it without doing that (being good at golf).

Especially since it’s advantageous to adjust suppliers that you own to maintain tiny margins (who owns the land they rent, for example)

Subsidiary income would be included in a financial statement.

Not if the landlord is a side entity and not a subsidiary.

You were talking about subsidiaries, though.

The company owning both Dollar General and the sister real estate would report consolidated income.

If you're saying there's a secret arm's length relationship between a dollar store chain and a real estate holding, structured just to trick the public into thinking low cost retail is low margin, I'm afraid that is not true.