On Fri, 15 Jan 2016 15:08:12 -0600, dpb wrote:

On 01/15/2016 1:00 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
...

The average sole proprietorship in the US has invested $30,000 in his
or her business. The average *profitable* sole proprietorship returns
$14,000/yr. to its owner (just over $11,000 to the average sole
proprietorship, including those that are not profitable).

That's buying yourself a very low-paying job. And the money they've
bought it with usually is borrowed.

These figures come from the Small Business Administration.

I'm sure there's no way to winnow out the deliberate "loss-leader" hobby
"businesses" from those statistics but I strongly suspect they skew them
drastically for folks actually making a living off theirs.

Also wonder how many are franchisees of some outfit? That's a pretty
sure way to give somebody else the money, too...

Another likely distortion in the numbers is the fact that once a sole
proprietorship starts making money there are incentives to operate
instead as an S-corp. I've "owned my jobs" for 35 years and have
operated as a sole proprietorship for only short periods of time at
the beginnings of new ventures.

--
Ned Simmons