Top 1% of Taxpayers Pay Almost 40% of All Taxes
Submitted by CARPE DIEM
The chart above (click to enlarge) is from the most recent study on income tax shares from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, which reported that:
1. The share of total federal income taxes paid by the top 1% of tax filers increased to 39.38% in 2005 (most recent year available), while the tax share of the top 5% climbed to 59.67%. The income tax share of the top half rose to 96.93%, according to recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data. The tax shares are the highest on record for these groups in comparable IRS data going back to 1986.
2. The share of adjusted gross income generated by the top 1% increased to 21.20% in 2005, relative to a level of 20.81% reached during the height of the stock market bubble in 2000 (when the income tax share of the top 1% was 37.42%). Although the income share of the top 1% is similar in 2000 and 2005, the income tax share was about two percentage points higher in 2005.
3. Between 1992 and 2000, the top one percent’s share of income jumped from 14.23% to 20.81%, an increase of nearly 7 percentage points, before slipping in 2001 and 2002. These data show that the most significant increases in this income share occurred in the 1990s, not in more recent years.
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