The Art of Deduction

I can get Individual Income Tax Filing: Total Deductions from FRED.

I can get it broken down as Individual Income Tax Filing: Standard Deductions and Individual Income Tax Filing: Itemized Deductions.

I can even get it broken down further, showing

• Individual Income Tax Filing: Statutory Adjustments: Student Loan Interest Deduction
• Individual Income Tax Filing: Itemized Deductions: Charitable Contributions
• Individual Income Tax Filing: Itemized Deductions: Home Mortgage Interest Paid

and such. But that's not what I want. I want corporate deductions. Specifically, I want the deduction for corporate compensation of employees. The data must be available, because

Most payments you make to employees and employee benefits are deductible business expenses to your company.

I want to see corporate compensation of employees (including wages, salaries, commissions, and bonuses, and "retirement plans, health insurance, life insurance, disability insurance, vacation, employee stock ownership plans, etc.") as a percent of total corporate deductions.

I want to see if employee compensation was rising (as a share of total corporate costs, or of deductible costs at least) during the time of the Great Inflation. I want to know what was happening in the 1960s and '70s when inflation was called "wage push".

Anyway, here's what I get from FRED. They all start out the same:

• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Bad debt expense
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Interest payments of regulated investment companies
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Income of organizations not filing corporation income tax returns: Federal Reserve banks
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Income of organizations not filing corporation income tax returns: Federally sponsored credit agencies
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Adjustment to depreciate expenditures for mining exploration, shafts, and wells
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: State and local taxes on corporate income
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Posttabulation amendments and revisions
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Disaster adjustments (net)
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Income of organizations not filing corporation income tax returns
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Depletion on domestic minerals
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Adjustment for misreporting on income tax returns
• Corporate profits: Total receipts less total deductions, IRS: Income of organizations not filing corporation income tax returns: Other

All of them subtract the deductions. None of them tell me what the numbers are, that they are subtracting. (And none of the titles say compensation of employees)

Not useful.


I did manage to find corporate compensation of employees at FRED. But for total deductions I'll have to go fishing.