Financial and Taxation Statistics for Enterprises

Detailed information for 1998

The objective of this annual series is to cover business activity within a calendar reference period. These statistics are used in two broad ways. First they provide a measure of financial position and performance of incorporated businesses by industry aggregations.Second, they are used as the benchmark for the quarterly estimates of corporate profits in the Canadian System of National Accounts (CSNA).

Data release - December 20, 2000

• Description
• Data sources and methodology
• Data accuracy

Description

The data collected comprise financial statements typically prepared by incorporated businesses to record their financial position and performance. The data include: asset, liability and equity items encompassed in a balance sheet, revenue and expense items as reported on an income statement, along with several common financial performance ratios.

These statistics are used in two broad ways. First they provide a measure of financial position and performance of incorporated businesses by industry aggregations. They are used by a wide variety of economists and industry analysts in both the private and government sectors. Second they are used as the benchmark for the quarterly estimates of corporate profits in the Canadian System of National Accounts.

Reference period: Calendar year

Subjects

• Business performance and ownership
• Corporate taxation
• Financial statements and performance

Data sources and methodology

Sampling

This is a sample survey with a cross-sectional design.

A stratified random sample is used. Units are stratified by size according to assets and revenue and by industry for each of 153 groups based on the SIC-C. All large enterprises with $50M assets are included in the sample. Stratum boundaries vary by industry, large units in each industry are selected with certainty and a sample is selected for other boundaries of which the sampling rate decreases as size decreases.

Data sources

Responding to this survey is voluntary.

Data are collected directly from survey respondents, extracted from administrative files and derived from other Statistics Canada surveys and/or other sources.

Data collected from the Quarterly Survey of Financial Statements (QFS) were annualized and then combined with data from a supplementary annual questionnaire that was mailed to survey respondents. The supplementary annual questionnaire was designed to obtain additional detailed information on operating expenses not available from the QFS.

Error detection

At the micro level, several checks are performed on the data to verify internal consistency and identify extreme values. At the macro level, the data are subjected to a detailed quality review process, including a comparative analysis to prior year; material errors are thereby identified and corrected.

Imputation

Non-respondents are imputed by applying a change factor to the unit's previous period data. Change factors are determined from units of similar size and industry for which current period responses exist. Assets and sales are used as auxiliary variables to calculate weights for estimation.

Estimation

Since data are obtained from one of the three data sources for each enterprise in the population of interest, estimates are derived from the simple tabulation of data.

Due to certain financial reporting constraints, data for enterprises in the insurance industry could not be obtained through the administrative data source. Data for the industry are therefore derived using QFS weighted estimates rather than a census.

Quality evaluation

The combined survey results are analyzed before publication. In general, the analysis includes a detailed review of the individual responses (especially for the largest enterprises), a review of general economic conditions as well as historic trends and comparisons with other data sources.

Disclosure control

Statistics Canada is prohibited by law from releasing any information it collects which could identify any person, business, or organization, unless consent has been given by the respondent or as permitted by the Statistics Act. Various confidentiality rules are applied to all data that are released or published to prevent the publication or disclosure of any information deemed confidential. If necessary, data are suppressed to prevent direct or residual disclosure of identifiable data.

The confidentiality of the reported statistics is protected under the provisions of the Statistics Act. For this reason, statistics are released in aggregate form only, with no potential identification of individually reported information. The confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act override the provisions of the Access to Information Act to guarantee the confidentiality of reported data of individual respondents.

Revisions and seasonal adjustment

Each year, the previous year's data are revised.

Data accuracy

While considerable effort is made to ensure high standards throughout all collection and processing operations, the resulting estimates are inevitably subject to a certain degree of error. There are two categories of errors in statistical information - sampling errors and non-sampling errors. Non-sampling errors is the only type that applies to this program, given that there was no sampling process used to produce these estimates (with the exception of the insurance industry).

Non-sampling errors can arise from a variety of sources and are difficult to measure and their importance can differ according to the purpose to which the data are being put. Among non-sampling errors are gaps in the information provided by corporations in their tax returns and errors in processing, such as data capture.