About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 1 (December 07, 2020)

handle is hein.crs/govddah0001 and id is 1 raw text is: SCongressional Research Servik Income Shares, Tax Shares, and Average Tax Rates Across the Income Distribution December 7, 2020 The distribution of income and tax burdens often informs tax policy debates. The U.S. income tax system is generally progressive. In a progressive tax system, those with higher incomes pay more, as a percentage of their income, in taxes. As a result, average tax rates tend to be higher for higher-income taxpayers. Future changes to the income tax system might seek to increase or decrease the progressivity of the tax system, or to leave the distribution of the tax burden unchanged. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is one source for data on the income and tax distribution. IRS data on the income and tax shares for 2018 w ere recently released. Changes to the tax code that were part of the 2017 tax revision (P.L. 115-97), commonly referred to as the Tax Cuts and JobsAct (TCJA), were generally effective for the 2018 tax year. Thus, these 2018 data provide information on how the TCJA initially affected the distribution of the tax burden and average tax rates. This Insight uses IRS data on income and tax shares from 2001 through 2018 to look at medium-term trends in the distribution of income and the income tax burden, as well as average tax rates for different income groups. Distribution of Income In 2018, the top 1% of taxpayers had 21% of total adjusted gross income (AGI). Since 2001, the share of AGI earned by the top 1% of the AGI distribution has fluctuated (Figure 1). After rising early in the 2000s, it fell during the Great Recession, before rising again, although not to levels seen in the mid- 2000s. Since 2001, when the share of AGI earned by the top 1% has fallen, the share of AGI going to earners in the 50th to 90th percentile of the income distribution has tended to rise. There has been less fluctuation in the share of AGI earned by taxpayers in the 90th to 99th percentile over the same period. The 12% share of AGI earned by those in the bottom 50% of the AGI distribution is lower than it was in the early 2000s, and has remained stable in recent years. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov IN11549 CRS NSIGHT Prepared for Membersand Commi ----es o Cong rss-----------------------------------

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most