Which US Industry Sectors Earn the Widest Profit Margins

Findings

Management of Companies at 24.43% leads every sector in net-income-to-receipts

PlainBizBench industries table loads 2,002 rows from IRS SOI across 20 two-digit NAICS sectors. Management of Companies and Enterprises records 24.43% net-income-to-receipts ratio in this sectors aggregation. IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) — Business Tax Statistics, 2023 tax year IRS SOI data covers 86 three-digit NAICS levels within those 20 two-digit sectors. The industries table extends to 288 four-digit NAICS rows and 638 five-digit NAICS rows. Management sector data joins Census County Business Patterns county-level rows totaling 1,097,769 across all NAICS codes.

Sectors table ranks Management of Companies and Enterprises above Finance and Insurance at 20.05% net-income-to-receipts. IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) — Business Tax Statistics, 2023 tax year Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction follows at 17.61% in the same 2-digit NAICS aggregation. PlainBizBench /sector/management-of-companies-and-enterprises/ page pulls these IRS SOI ratios for all 970 six-digit industries under the sector. US Census Bureau County Business Patterns 2023 dataset supplies employment figures for each NAICS row at county level.

Industries table filters 2023 tax year returns into 20 two-digit NAICS sectors table. Management of Companies holds the top spot at the sector level. This aggregation includes receipts above $1 billion thresholds from IRS SOI. PlainBizBench cross-joins produce 84,762 state-level rows linking sectors table margins to Census County Business Patterns payroll data. Small Business Administration 7(a) loan data overlays net-income metrics for Management sub-industries.

Six-digit NAICS rows in industries table total 970 from IRS SOI 2023. Management sector benchmarks appear in full at /sector/management-of-companies-and-enterprises/. Sectors table net-income-to-receipts column drives rankings across 288 four-digit levels. County Business Patterns 2023 joins add 1,097,769 rows to drill NAICS 55 margins by location. US Census Bureau — County Business Patterns 2023

Wholesale Trade at 2.76% and the pass-through economics that explain the gap

Industries table aggregates Wholesale Trade NAICS 42 at 4.13% net-income-to-receipts from IRS SOI 2023 tax year returns. NAICS 424 Merchant Wholesalers, Nondurable Goods posts 2.76% in four-digit NAICS rows. NAICS 423 Merchant Wholesalers, Durable Goods records 2.89% in the same granularity. PlainBizBench sectors table flags Wholesale Trade as lowest among large 2-digit NAICS sectors with receipts above $1 billion.

Wholesale Trade page at /sector/wholesale-trade/ lists all subsector margins from 638 five-digit NAICS rows in industries table. IRS SOI data populates net-income-to-receipts for 970 six-digit industries under NAICS 42. County Business Patterns 2023 cross-join yields 1,097,769 county-level rows tying Wholesale margins to local employment. State-level rows total 84,762 for NAICS 424 and 423 breakdowns.

Sectors table positions Wholesale Trade NAICS 42 below Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services at 13.98%. NAICS 424 at 2.76% anchors the bottom in four-digit levels with high receipts. PlainBizBench industries table holds 288 four-digit rows including these low-margin wholesalers. Small Business Administration 504 Loan Program Data links payroll from Census County Business Patterns to Wholesale net-income figures.

IRS SOI 2023 covers 86 three-digit NAICS across 20 two-digit sectors table entries. Wholesale subsectors NAICS 423 and 424 fill 638 five-digit rows with ratios under 3%. US Census Bureau — County Business Patterns 2023 Industries table joins produce granular views of 2.76% margins against 1,097,769 county-level employment rows. The /industries/ page indexes all 2,002 rows for Wholesale Trade drilling.

At the 6-digit NAICS level, Finance subsector 52 widens the lead

Industries table draws NAICS 52 Finance and Insurance at 20.05% net-income-to-receipts for 3-digit level with receipts above $1 billion. This marks the highest among broad categories in IRS SOI 2023 tax year. PlainBizBench populates 970 six-digit rows under NAICS 52 from the full 2,002 industries dataset. Sectors table ranks Finance second overall at 20.05% across 20 two-digit NAICS.

Finance and Insurance benchmarks at /sector/finance-and-insurance/ expose six-digit granularity down to 638 five-digit NAICS rows. NAICS 52 holds 20.05% in 86 three-digit aggregations filtered by $1 billion receipts. County Business Patterns 2023 cross-joins add 84,762 state-level rows to NAICS 52 margins. Industries table links these to 288 four-digit sub-industries.

IRS SOI data feeds 970 six-digit NAICS 52 rows into PlainBizBench sectors table. Finance subsector tops 3-digit peers like NAICS 54 at 13.98%. The dataset spans 1,097,769 county-level rows via Census joins for payroll under Finance. Small Business Administration 7(a) data overlays loan metrics on 20.05% ratios.

Six-digit industries under NAICS 52 total portions of 2,002 rows from IRS SOI 2023. Sectors table net-income-to-receipts for Finance reaches across 288 four-digit levels. The /states/ page maps 84,762 state rows to NAICS 52 benchmarks. PlainBizBench ties 970 six-digit entries to county employment from 1,097,769 rows.

PlainBizBench industries table unifies IRS SOI 2023 ratios across 20 two-digit NAICS sectors, where Management of Companies and Enterprises hits 24.43% against Wholesale Trade lows of 2.76% in NAICS 424. Finance NAICS 52 sustains roughly 20% at 3-digit levels with $1 billion receipts, spanning 970 six-digit rows joined to 1,097,769 Census County Business Patterns county rows and 84,762 state rows. These layers in the 2,002-industry dataset enable margin contrasts from sectors table highs to Wholesale subsectors, with Small Business Administration loan data adding payroll context across all granularities.

Cross-source benchmarking notes: IRS SOI versus Census ASM

Net-income-to-receipts ratios drawn from IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) Form 1120 corporate returns, Form 1120-S subchapter-S elections, and Form 1065 partnership returns aggregate book income reported on returns rather than GAAP financial-statement income. Census Bureau Annual Survey of Manufactures (ASM) and Annual Business Survey (ABS) report value-added, capital expenditures, and operating ratios on a survey-respondent basis with sampling-weight adjustment, producing measures that differ structurally from SOI tabulations even at the same NAICS digit-level. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Industry Economic Accounts publish gross-output and value-added by industry on the Use Table and Make Table double-entry framework and reconcile to GDP-by-industry, while BLS Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) tabulates employment and wage data from unemployment-insurance program filings rather than from federal tax returns. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) supersedes the older Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) and harmonizes with Statistics Canada NAICS-Canada and INEGI SCIAN; the United Nations International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC) Revision 4 maps to NAICS through published correspondence tables. Receipts above the SOI sampling threshold (currently $250,000 for proprietorships and $500,000 for partnerships and corporations) are reported with greater granularity, while smaller filers contribute through estimation cells. The Census Statistics of US Businesses (SUSB) cross-tab reports establishment counts, payroll, and receipts by NAICS-employment-firm-size while the Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) series publishes firm-birth, firm-death, and net-job-creation flows. The 2022 NAICS revision moved several digital-platform and renewable-energy industries between sectors; comparisons across the 2017 and 2022 NAICS basis require concordance bridges. Sector aggregation conventions differ: IRS reports profit-and-loss statements by NAICS minor industry while BEA reconciles to a 71-industry summary scheme that re-groups some manufacturing subsectors. Reading any single industry's 24.43% margin therefore requires noting which agency, which form, which tax year, and which classification revision produced the figure.

Industry-statistics reference notes

Methodological vocabulary for benchmarking US industries: Statistics of Income (SOI) Form 1120 / 1120-S / 1065 corporate-return aggregates partition net income by deduction class. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Industry Economic Accounts publish Use tables, Make tables, and input-output (IO) matrices that decompose intermediate inputs from value added. NAICS classifications run from 2-digit sectors through 6-digit national industries, with 2022 NAICS revisions affecting Information sector cloud-services codes 518210 / 519290 and Renewable Energy generation codes 221115–221118. The Statistics of US Businesses (SUSB) cross-tab employment-firm-receipts at the establishment level. The Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS) series tracks firm birth-death cohorts and job creation/destruction by industry-age. Major equity-index inclusion methodologies — Fortune 500 (revenue-ranked), Inc. 5000 (revenue-growth-ranked), Russell 2000 / 3000 (float-adjusted market-cap ranked), S&P SmallCap 600 / MidCap 400 (committee-selected with profitability + liquidity floors) — define the public-company comparable peer set for each industry. Standard financial measures include EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization), EBIT (operating income), operating margin (EBIT ÷ revenue), gross margin (gross profit ÷ revenue), and net margin (net income ÷ revenue). The GAAP versus non-GAAP distinction governs whether SBC (stock-based compensation), restructuring charges, and certain impairment writedowns are excluded from operating earnings. Revenue-recognition timing follows ASC 606 five-step model (identify contract, identify performance obligations, determine transaction price, allocate price, recognize revenue) replacing the prior industry-specific guidance. Lease accounting under ASC 842 capitalizes operating leases on the balance sheet through right-of-use asset and lease-liability lines. Working-capital cycle measures include DSO (days sales outstanding), DPO (days payable outstanding), DIO (days inventory outstanding), and the cash-conversion cycle CCC = DIO + DSO − DPO. Bankruptcy-prediction screens such as Altman Z-score and Piotroski F-score quantify financial-distress and quality respectively. Capital-intensity measures Capex-to-revenue and R&D-to-revenue (NAICS 5417 R&D-services intensity benchmark) describe asset-vs-knowledge composition. Asset-turnover ratio (revenue ÷ total assets) and Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) jointly determine economic value-creation above the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC). Free Cash Flow (FCF) yield measures owner returns net of capex; Buffett's Owner Earnings adjusts FCF further for working-capital and maintenance-capex. The Magic Formula (Greenblatt: rank by earnings yield × ROIC) operationalizes the value-and-quality screen at the industry-comparable level. Read our methodology page for cross-source reconciliation rules.