1. The annual income statements of enterprises constitute a major source of structural information about the entire field of enterprises in business.
Each year, (at the start of the year N+1), every enterprise is required to send its annual profit declaration (for the year N) to its designated tax office.
The information contained within these declarations varies in detail according to the tax system to which the enterprise is subjected: Industrial and Commercial Profits System (BIC), Non-Commercial Profits system (BNC) or Agricultural Profits (BA).
Within each of these systems, the detail of the information provided varies according to the size of the enterprise.

2. In a second phase, the information has been enriched by information originating from the Annual Business Survey.
This information has been collected by INSEE for the commercial and services sectors and by the competent ministries for other business sectors.
A common core of data is collected annually: accounting data, breakdown of turnover into branches and diverse sector-specific information.