Top 50 Percent of All Taxpayers Paid 96.7 Percent of All Federal Income Taxes; Top 1 Percent Paid 38.1 Percent; and Bottom 90 Percent Paid 29.7 Percent of All Federal Income Taxes
The tax burden on upper-incomers is rising, according to the new IRS statistics. The top 1% of all filers paid about 38.1% in 2012, the most recent year IRS has analyzed. That’s a 3% increase from the previous year. The top 1% only reported 21.9% of total adjusted gross income (AGI), yet they paid a whopping 38.1% of all taxes, a 16.2% difference. Filers needed to have AGI of at least $434,682 to qualify for the top 1% of earners. That tax burden should be even higher when 2013 stats are available since the top tax rates were increased under the Obama administration. The data shows that these taxpayers in this 1% level pay much higher effective income tax rates than lower-income taxpayer, in fact, nearly seven times higher than the bottom 50% of taxpayers. The effective tax rate for 1% was 22.8% vs only 3.3% for the bottom 50%.
The highest 5% paid 58.9% of total income tax and accounted for 36.8% of all adjusted gross income. $175,817 of AGI put you in the top 5% of earners. The top 10% of filers, those with AGIs of $125,195 or more, bore 70.2% of the total tax burden while bringing in less than 48% of the total adjusted gross income. That means the bottom 90% of AGI returns paid less than 30% of the income tax in the country
The top 50% of filers paid 97% of the total federal income tax while the bottom 50% of filers only paid 3% of the total federal income tax take. The adjusted gross income at 50% is approximately $36,000.
Data was from the Tax Foundation
