The Era of 4 Million Women Entrepreneurs... Their Share Also Exceeds 40%

National Tax Service, 2023 Business Registration and VAT Filing Status
9.95 Million Active Businesses at the End of 2023... 4.02 Million Owned by Women

The number of female entrepreneurs has steadily increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, surpassing 4 million for the first time last year.

The National Tax Service announced on the 12th the results of its analysis of the "2023 Business Registration and Value-Added Tax Filing Status," which included this information.

According to the data, as of the end of last year, the number of active businesses was 9.95 million, an increase of 273,000 (2.8%) compared to the previous year (9.677 million). Active businesses refer to those that have registered their business and are actually operating during the period (including those temporarily closed). Last year, there were 8.648 million individual businesses (86.9%) and 1.302 million corporate businesses (13.1%). The number of active businesses has continuously increased every year, rising 23.7% compared to 2019 (8.046 million), with individual businesses up 22.8% and corporate businesses up 29.8%.

At the end of 2023, the number of female entrepreneurs reached 4.018 million, surpassing 4 million for the first time since gender-based business data began to be collected in 2011. The proportion of female entrepreneurs among all business owners also increased by 1.2 percentage points from 39.2% in 2019 to 40.4%. By industry type, the active female business status was highest in real estate rental (1.164 million, 29.0%), services (838,000, 20.9%), and retail (776,000, 19.3%). These top three industries accounted for 69.2% of all active female entrepreneurs.

Status of Female Business Operators.

Last year, the number of new businesses was 1.276 million, a decrease of 76,000 compared to the previous year (1.352 million), with 1.147 million individual businesses (89.9%) and 128,000 corporate businesses (10.1%) newly established. Among individual new businesses by industry, retail accounted for 359,000 (31.3%), services 274,000 (23.9%), and food service 159,000 (13.4%). For corporations, the leading industries were services (46,000, 35.6%), wholesale (18,000, 13.9%), and manufacturing (15,000, 11.9%).

The age distribution of new business owners was highest among those in their 40s (334,000), followed by those in their 30s (317,000), and 50s (274,000). Those aged 30 to 50 accounted for 925,000, or 72.6% of the total.

The number of businesses filing value-added tax in 2023 was 8.023 million, an increase of 1.27 million (18.8%) compared to 2019 (6.753 million). The National Tax Service attributes this to the increase in active businesses and the expansion of filing methods.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.