The MWTS provides national estimates of monthly sales, end-of-month inventories, and inventory-to-sales ratios by kind of business for merchant wholesalers, excluding manufacturers' sales branches and offices, located in the United States. Specifically, the MWTS covers wholesale merchants who sell goods on their own account and includes such businesses as wholesale merchants or jobbers, industrial distributors, exporters, and importers.
The MWTS produces sales and inventory statistics for your segment of the economy. It is a valued economic indicator, and the sales and inventory data are used as part of the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates.
Complete the survey with the data for any period of time during the last month that the company was in operation. We also need the date that the company went out of business. If you sold your business, record the following in the Remarks section:
Indicate this information in the remarks section of the form and return it.
The Census Bureau uses IRS administrative data whenever possible. However, the IRS data does not provide the level of detail needed in most Census Bureau surveys.
Yes, the U.S. Census Bureau is required by Title 13 United States Code, Section 9, to keep your information confidential and can use your responses only to produce statistics. The Census Bureau is not permitted to publicly release your responses in a way that could identify your business, organization, or institution. Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, your data are protected from cybersecurity risks through screening of the systems that transmit your data.
The Census Bureau obtains a list of EINs regularly from other government agencies that use this information, for example, the U.S. Social Security Administration. We are authorized to obtain this information by Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue code.