Starting or acquiring a business has long been considered an American dream. For many, this dream is reality, whether it is a part-time venture with annual receipts of less than $25,000 or a corporate entity with receipts of more than $1,000,000 per year. For the purpose of discussing the present and future of self-ownership business opportunities in the United States, the material in this chapter will focus primarily on what has been published about small business and homebased business from a variety of sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

In its efforts to estimate the number of small businesses in the country, the U.S. Census Bureau counts Schedule C businesses (individual proprietorship or self-employed persons), partnerships, and Subchapter S corporations (usually small corporations in which the profits pass through to the owners without being taxed first). It does...