What is the percentage of sole proprietorship?
Jackson Reed
Updated on January 16, 2026
Over 70 percent of U.S. businesses are owned and operated by sole proprietors or sole traders.
What percentage of small businesses are sole proprietorships?
73.2 percent
SBA Data. The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy reports that sole proprietors account for 73.2 percent of U.S. small businesses. The percentage of small businesses that are corporations amounts to 19.5 percent.
What percentage of sales are sole proprietorships responsible for?
Most sole proprietorships are small, however. All together they generate only about 6 percent of all United States sales.
What percentage of business profits come from sole proprietorships?
Here are some statistics that jump out: There were about 25.5 million sole proprietors (exclusive of farmers) in 2016, compared with 25.2 million in 2015. This is a 1.2% increase. Profits as a percentage of business receipts were 23.1%, even though total profits fell 1.1% to $328.2 billion in 2016.
Why do sole proprietorships account for only 6% of all United States sales?
75% of all businesses are sole proprietorships, but only account for 6% of sales. This is because most sole proprietorships are small compared to large corporations. They generate about 5% of all sales and about 10% of all income. What are the advantages/disadvantages of partnerships?
What are percentage of businesses in the US are sole proprietorships?
In this way, what percentage of businesses in the US are partnerships? According to Census data, 73.1 percent of all businesses were sole proprietorships (20.3 million firms). 13.1 percent of all businesses were S corporations (3.65 million firms), and about 8 percent were partnerships (2.2 million firms). What businesses are sole proprietorships?
What was the net income of a sole proprietorship in 2008?
Total 2008 net income of the 22.5 million sole proprietorships amounted to 265 billion dollars, which was about a 5 percent drop from the 2007 figure. Although the number of sole proprietors filing tax returns grew, the IRS statistics show that in 2008, the average annual net income of a sole proprietorship was only $12,000.
What was the number of sole proprietors in 1990?
The number of nonagricultural sole proprietors who filed tax returns in 1990 numbered just under 15 million. By 2008, that number had grown to over 22.5 million, a total that overshadowed the just over 3 million partnerships and about 5.8 million corporations.
Why are sole proprietorships declining in the US?
Because three quarters of all U.S. businesses are sole proprietorships, this trend is not good for small business. Revenues at the average sole proprietorship appear to be dropping because their numbers have been growing rapidly.