Other Accounting Services

Median gross receipts of $13,108 put the typical filer somewhere between a serious side income and a failing attempt at a full-time one, and the receipts figure alone cannot tell you which.

At 252,312 filers, Other Accounting Services is crowded. Crowding is survivable — most of those filers are not serious competitors — but it does mean the floor on price is set by people who are not costing their own time.

5.7% cleared $100,000 in receipts. That is a meaningful upper tier and it is worth asking what separates them, because it is rarely effort alone.

Independent professional work suits people who can carry the whole business — delivery, sales, admin and collections — because with no employees all four are one person’s week.

There is no qualification, licence or minimum to appear in this data — you file and you are counted. Read the receipts distribution as the price of that: no barrier at the door means no filter before the numbers.

The top quarter of Other Accounting Services earns 6.8x the bottom quarter — under $4,856 against over $33,114, a spread of $28,258. Distributions this stretched are usually two different jobs sharing one label, and any average across them means little.

The bottom quarter of Other Accounting Services earns under $4,856 — $45,164 below the $50,020 a typical American job pays. Entering at the bottom and waiting is a live risk here, not a theoretical one, and some people never leave that quarter.

Do not start this if you dislike selling. Skill is not the constraint in this subsector — client acquisition is, and it never stops being.

Of the 252,312 people who filed as Other Accounting Services in 2022, 44.7% grossed under $10,000 for the year — 112,758 people who did not clear a part-time wage in revenue, let alone in profit.

Take it as a floor, not an estimate. The $10,000 threshold is measured on money received, before materials, rent, fuel, insurance and self-employment tax, so the true share of filers who ended the year with no income is higher than the figure shown — we simply cannot say how much higher.

From $4,856 to $33,114 is 6.8x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $13,108 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.

In cash terms the middle half of Other Accounting Services runs $4,856 to $33,114 — $28,258 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $13,108.

The 75th percentile is $33,114. Reaching it from the $13,108 midpoint is $20,006 a year; reaching it from the $4,856 that the bottom quarter of Other Accounting Services earn is $28,258.

The upper half of the middle range — $13,108 to $33,114, or $20,006 — is far longer than the lower half at $8,252. In a shape like this an average would flatter Other Accounting Services considerably, and would describe nobody.

Spread across a 2,080-hour year those receipts come to $6.30 an hour at the midpoint, $2.33 at the 25th percentile and $15.92 at the 75th. That is turnover per hour, not pay per hour, and it is not comparable with the $24.04 an hour a typical American job pays.

Counted straight off the return: 64,946 filers grossed under $5,000, 47,815 took $5,000 to $9,999, 64,647 took $10,000 to $24,999, 14,477 cleared $100,000 and 2,679 cleared $250,000.