I want to know out of all the corporations that are in existence in
the United States or that have been formed and are no longer in
existence, how many are making pre-tax profits in the following
categories:

more than $1 million per year
more than $2 million per year
more than $3 million per year
more than $4 million per year
more than $5 million per year
more than $6 million per year
more than $7 million per year
more than $8 million per year
more than $9 million per year
more than $10 million per year

if you can't find the exact data or if you can't find it in the exact
grouping please get back to me with what you can find and see if it
will suffice.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 26 May 2004 07:24 PDT

Hello gapgapgap-ga,

Some data is available that might meet your needs, but there are some
important constraints:

--the data is for about five million U.S. corporations operating in
the year 2000 (there is no data I'm aware of that would report on
defunct corporations)

--the data is is divided up by size, according to the amount of
"business receipts" in the following categories:

--less than $25,000
--$25,000-50,000
--$50,000-100,000
--$100,000-250,000
--$250,000-500,000
--$500,000-1 million
--$1-2.5 million
--$2.5-5 million
--$5-10 million
--$10-50 million
--over $50 million

Would this information meet your needs?

---

Clarification of Question by gapgapgap-ga on 26 May 2004 13:52 PDT

yes thats OK.

Hello again, gapgapgap-ga,

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.  I'm glad to hear that the
information I suggested will meet your needs.

Corporations in the US report their income and related data to the IRS
when they file their corporate income taxes, and the IRS, in turn,
makes some of the information available in the form of national
statistical summaries.

I've included the most pertinent statistical information below, and I
think that it should fully meet your needs.

However, before rating this answer, please let me know if anything is
not clear, or if you need any additional information.  Just post a
Request for Clarification, and I'll be happy to assist you further.

pafalafa-ga

==========

The main IRS documents and datasets detailing corporate incomes
according to the size of the corporation can be found here:

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=96293,00.html

Corporation Tax Statistics - Data by Size 


 
The most pertinent dataset for your needs was created fairly recently
(2003) but reports data for the tax year 2000:


Returns of Active Corporations: Selected Balance Sheet, Income
Statement, and Tax Items, by Sector, by Size of Business Receipts,
2000.  SOI-2000, Corporation Income Tax Returns, September 2003. 
Excel ver. 4.  September 2003.

Clicking on the link will take you to an Excel spreadsheet of data here:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/00co05nr.xls

which reports the following:

Total number of corporations reporting....5,045,274
Total assets of these corporations............$47.03 trillion
Total receipts........................................$20.60 trillion
Total net income....................................$927 billion

The business receipts data is broken down as follows:

Receipts under $25,000..........................1,220,003 corporations

From $25,000 to under $50,000.............. 305,371
  
$50,000 to under $100,000....................477,376 

=====
 
Subtotal:
All corps. under $100,000 receipts...........2,002,750  

=====


$100,000 to under $250,000...................837,072  

$250,000 to under $500,000...................677,480 

$500,000 to under $1,000,000................581,940  

$1 million to under $2.5 million...............487,533  

$2.5 million to under $5 million...............212,496  

$5 million to under $10 million................115,106  

$10 million to under $50 million..............104,524  

$50 million or more................................26,372  

==========

Again, I hope this is exactly what you need.  But if you have any
questions at all, just let me know.

pafalafa-ga



search strategy:  Google search on: [ corporate income statistics site:gov]

---

Request for Answer Clarification by gapgapgap-ga on 26 May 2004 19:01 PDT

I need one more small piece of the puzzle. I need the falure rate as a percentage.

---

Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 26 May 2004 20:09 PDT

Hello again.

I'll be glad to look into the failure rate for you.  I'm assuming you
mean something along the lines of the number of businesses that go
bankrupt each year, and what percent of overall businesses they
represent.  Since bankruptcy data is not kept by the IRS, the numbers
will be for businesses overall, rather than broken out into the same
sorts of categories used in my initial answer.

If that's what you had in mind, fine...no need to reply to this note.  

But if you're looking for something different, please let me know at
your earliest convenience.

Thanks.

---

Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 27 May 2004 11:44 PDT

Hello ggg-ga, yet again.

I checked out the latest bankruptcy data from the US Bankruptcy
Courts.  The data are here:

http://www.uscourts.gov/Press_Releases/1203f2.xls

and they report that, for the calendar year 2003, there were 35,037
businesses declaring bankruptcy.

This is a small percentage of the more than 5 million corporations in
the country (and not all of the bankrupt businesses were incorporated
in the first place).

In fact, the numbers suggest that, at most, only 35,037 / 5,045,274 = 
0.7% of corporations are going bankrupt in any year.  That is, the
failure rate is less than 1%.

There are, no doubt, other ways of measuring business failure rates,
but I believe the bankruptcy statistics are the most widely used
measure.

Let me know if you need any additional information.

pafalafa-ga