Business and Tax Data

Business and tax data are among the most sensitive data collected by government agencies and researchers. These data often contain highly skewed variables that can be at risk for disclosures. For example, if given actual total payroll on manufacturers in the airline industry, it may be relatively easy to identify Boeing; it is the record with the largest payroll. Furthermore, businesses and individuals understandably want to guard the privacy of this information. For example, private companies do not want their competition to know the amounts they spend on marketing, research and development, payroll, etc., as this might compromise their business practice. And, individuals may be reluctant for others to learn their salaries or total incomes.

If data collectors disseminated business and tax data in ways that resulted in harm to businesses and individuals, data subjects might not be willing to provide their data. This would damage government's ability to make economic policy and reduce researchers' opportunities to analyze economic data. Thus, most business and tax data, if released at all (in fact, there are no public use business micrdata available in the U.S.), are altered before release.

Nearly all the typical alteration strategies are applied on business and tax data; see the Methods tab at the top of this page for explanation of the methods. Below are links to illustrative applications of confidentiality protections on business and tax data. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does illustrate the techniques typically used to protect these data.