Statistical Abstract of the United Stated

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Business Enterprise

Patents issued in 1994: 113,600
Percent issued to foreign country residents: 43%
Bankruptcies filed in 1994: 845,257
Business: 7%
Nonbusiness: 93%
Change from 1993 -8%

In Brief
This section relates to the place and behavior of the business firm and to business initiative in the American economy. It includes data on the number, type, and size of businesses; financial data of domestic and multinational U.S. corporations; business investment, expenditures, and profits; sales and inventories; and business failures. Additional business data may be found in other sections, particularly 27 and 28.

The principal sources of these data are the Survey of Current Business, published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the Federal Reserve Bulletin, issued by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and annual Statistics of Income reports on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), The Business Failure Record issued by The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation, Milton, CT, and Fortune and The Fortune Directory, issued by Time, Inc., New York.

Business Firms
A firm is generally defined as a business organization under a single management and may include one or more establishments (i.e., a single physical location at which business is conducted). The terms firm, business, company, and enterprise are used interchangeably throughout this section. Examples of series where the industrial distribution is based on data collected from establishments are those on capital stock, those on gross domestic product by industry, and those on employment and earnings (section 13). Examples of company-based series are those on business expenditures for new plant and equipment, those from IRS Statistics of Income, and those on corporation profits by industry. A firm doing business in more than one industry is classified by industry according to the major activity of the firm as a whole. The industrial classification is based on the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Manual (see text, section 13).

The IRS concept of a business firm relates primarily to the legal entity used for tax reporting purposes. The IRS Statistics of Income reports present data, based on a sample of tax returns before audit, separately for sole proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations. Data presented are for active enterprises only. A sole proprietorship is an unincorporated business owned by one person including large enterprises with many employees and hired managers and part-time operations in which the owner is the only person involved. A partnership is an unincorporated business owned by two or more persons, each of whom has a financial interest in the business. The "persons" could be individuals, estates, trusts, or other partnerships, or corporations. A corporation is a business that is legally incorporated under state laws. The IRS recognizes many types of businesses as corporations, including joint-stock companies, insurance companies, and unincorporated associations such as business trusts, etc. While many corporations file consolidated tax returns, most corporate tax returns represent individual corporations, some of which are affiliated through common ownership or control with other corporations filing separate returns.

Assets and Liabilities
In its annual report, Statistics of Income, Corporation Income Tax Returns, the IRS presents balance sheet and income estimates for all active U.S. corporations. The Bureau of the Census issues the Quarterly Financial Report for Manufacturing, Mining, and Trade Corporations (QFR), which presents quarterly income account and balance sheet data for manufacturing, mining, and trade industries. This report was prepared by the Federal Trade Commission until responsibilities for QFR were transferred to Census beginning with the fourth quarter 1982 report. One of the most comprehensive measures of the investment position of the business sector (and the only measure adjusted to current replacement cost) is the BEA capital stock series.