Approximately 23.4 million individual income tax returns reported nonfarm sole proprietorship activity for tax year 2011, a 1.8 percent increase from 2010, according to newly released statistics from the Internal Revenue Service.
Profits at sole proprietorships rose to $282.6 billion for the year, a 5.6-percent increase from 2010. Total receipts increased to $1.3 trillion for 2011, up 5.9 percent from 2010.
“All nonfarm sole proprietorship industries experienced increases in profits for 2011 with two exceptions: retail trade sector (down 2.9 percent) and all other industries (down 1.0 percent),” wrote Adrian Dungan in the IRS’s
The summer 2013 issue of the SOI Bulletin also features data from Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, filed with individual income tax returns for tax years 2008 through 2010. The IRS found that average individual W-2 earnings rose slightly from $40,532 in 2008 to $40,892 in 2010. Some 65.8 million taxpayers with W-2 income participated in an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan in tax year 2010, making $209.2 billion in direct contributions for the year.
The bulletin also includes statistics on foreign recipients of U.S. income in 2010. The IRS reported that foreign persons received $557.8 billion in U.S.-source income in calendar year 2010, representing a 2.1-percent increase over the amount paid in 2009. Interest payments accounted for the largest share of income paid to foreign recipients (46.8 percent) in 2010, followed by dividends (20 percent).
Another article in the bulletin reports on foreign-controlled domestic corporations in 2010. Foreign-controlled domestic corporations (73,210) accounted for 1.3 percent of all U.S. corporation income tax returns filed for tax year 2010. Total receipts for these corporations ($4.1 trillion) and total assets ($11.2 trillion) accounted for 15.5 percent of the receipts and 14.1 percent of the assets reported on all U.S. corporation income tax returns for the year.
In a report on the corporate foreign tax credit, the IRS reported that for tax year 2009, some 5,706 U.S. corporations claimed a foreign tax credit of more than $93 billion against their U.S. income tax liability.
In a report on unrelated business income tax returns, the IRS reported that some 42,469 tax-exempt organizations reported $9.7 billion in gross unrelated business income for tax year 2009.
And in a report on use of the Empowerment Zone and Renewal Community Employment Credit for tax years 1998-2010, the IRS noted that the amount of allowable EZ/RC employment credit claimed on individual and corporate tax returns increased from $41.7 million in 1998, to $277.1 million in 2005, before declining to $172.9 million in 2010.
The Statistics of Income Bulletins are available for download at
