Recently, we shared links to a wide range of business-focused IRS forms on SmallBusiness.com. Putting together that list helped us once again realize that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has the world’s largest collection of statistics related to personal and business income, taxes, credits, transactions and just about any statistical data that can be extracted from all the various forms filed by businesses. The collection even has a name and acronym, the Statistics of Income (SOI). While much of this data is used by academics, planners and various types of analysts, every once in a while, a business owner or manager might run into a question for which the answer can be found, with a little help and guidance, in resources like these.
(Note: Several of these links are PDFs)
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Integrated Business Data (IBD)
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This contains statistical tables and articles on all businesses, which were compiled to form the SOI Integrated Business Dataset (IBD). The IBD was assembled at the table level from the annual SOI cross-sectional studies of corporations (C and S corporations), partnerships, and nonfarm sole proprietorships. Data from these types of organizations is used to enable examination of changes in business composition. Data from these annual statistical studies are generally publicly available and are published in a variety of SOI reports. |
| Form 8824 | Data for Like-Kind Property Exchanges. 1995–2013 |
| The information you’ll find here are articles and data which provide statistics on income, deductions, tax, credits, and more as reported by corporations filing on Form 1120 (1120, 1120-A, 1120-L, 1120-PC, 1120-REIT, 1120-RIC, and more) returns and associated schedules can be found here. |
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Here you’ll find statistics for both inbound and outbound international corporate activities here. There’s also information on specialized areas covering foreign trusts, international boycotts, and including form types: 5471, 5472, 1118, 1120-F, 1120-FSC, 5713, 5735, and more. |
| Partnerships are relationships between two or more persons who join to carry on a trade or business, with each person contributing money, property, labor or skill, and each expecting to share in the profits and losses of the business. These data come from taxpayers filing Form 1065 or 1065-B. Look here for statistics and related information on partnerships. |
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S corporations are domestic corporations that elect to be taxed individually on the corporation’s income; they can have no more than 75 shareholders (only U.S. citizens, resident aliens, estates, certain trusts, and exempt organizations) and one class of stock. These corporations file on Form 1120S . Look here for statistics and related information on these corporations. |
| Sole Proprietorships are one-person businesses, also called self-employed, no-employee businesses, among others. These links go to statistics covering basic data, business receipts, deductions, and net income reported by an individual taxpayer on Schedule C (non-farm) of Form 1040. There are also statistics for Schedule F (farm) of Form 1040. |
| Contains statistics on taxes levied on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of commodities, including data for environmental, gasoline, and telephone excise taxes, and more. |