Spring SOI Spotlights Farm Proprietorships, S Corporations, Noncash Contributions

The just-released spring 2007 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin includes the first article on farm proprietorship returns by the Internal Revenue Service in more than 20 years, as well as articles on high-income individual income tax returns, taxpayers reporting noncash contributions, qualified zone academy bonds, international boycott reports and S corporations. In addition, this issue of the bulletin presents selected tax year 1990-2004 individual income tax return data that have been indexed for inflation, and tax year 2005 individual income tax return statistics classified by state and size of adjusted gross income. For tax year 2004, there were 3,021,435 individual income tax returns filed with adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more and 3,067,602 returns with expanded income of $200,000 or more. The Bulletin highlights the following: * For tax year 2004, there were 25.3 million individual taxpayers who itemized deductions and reported a deduction for noncash charitable contributions. Those taxpayers reported $43.4 billion in deductions for these noncash contributions. Individuals whose total noncash charitable deductions on Schedule A, Itemized Deductions, exceed $500 are required to report these donations in detail on Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions. For 2004, a total of 6.6 million individuals, representing a little more than a quarter of those who reported noncash charitable contributions, filed Form 8283. These individuals reported noncash contributions valued at almost $37.2 billion, or nearly 86 percent of all noncash contributions. * The number of farm proprietorship returns declined between tax years 1998 and 2004, with the majority of farm proprietorship returns showing a farm net loss. For tax year 2004, some 1.4 million farm proprietorship returns, or 70 percent of the total, had a farm net loss. Gross farm income reported on sole proprietorship returns totaled $93.3 billion for tax year 1998 and increased 8.3 percent to $101 billion in 2004. Total farm expenses grew even more during this period, by 12.9 percent, from $101.2 billion in 1998 to $114.3 billion in 2004. * For tax year 2003, some 1,268 taxpayers filed Form 5713, International Boycott Report; of these, 124 reported receiving boycott requests, and 36 agreed to participate in a boycott. There were 41 taxpayers who lost a portion of their tax benefits as a result of their participation in a boycott or because they had operations in a boycotting country and claimed the extraterritorial income exclusion. Similarly, 1,343 Forms 5713 were filed for tax year 2004; of these, 131 taxpayers reported boycott requests, 45 agreed to participate, and 46 taxpayers reported tax consequences. For both years, the percentage of filers who lost tax benefits was approximately 3 percent. * The final bulletin article takes a look at the dominance of the wholesale and retail trade division among S corporations since 1959. For tax year 2004, some 45 years after the creation of S corporations, wholesale and retail represented the largest portion of total receipts, total deductions, portfolio income, total net income (less deficit) and total assets.