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![handle is hein.taxfoundation/srecxz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: TAX
FOUNDATION
November 1994
Number 42
Who Pays Federal Income Taxes?
Newly released income tax data shows
that the top one percent of income earners
now pay more than one quarter of all federal
individual income taxes, as shown in Figure 1.
This striking fact is available in tax return sta-
tistics for 1992 from the Internal Revenue Ser-
vice. These statistics are examined in this re-
port to provide an overview of the distribution
of federal income tax payments.
Individual Income
Tax Data For 1992
Data from the IRS shows that 112.7
million federal individual income tax returns
were filed in 1992, which was down one
percent from 1991. While returns were
down, incomes were growing in 1992 after
the recession bottomed out in March 1991,
and as a result, total Adjusted Gross Income
(AGI) on income tax returns rose 4.8 percent
in 1992. Total individual income taxes paid,
which rose 4.7 percent, grew faster than
incomes.
Table / shows federal income tax return
data for 1992, focusing on the income earned
and taxes paid by income groups at the
higher end of the income distribution. For
example, the top one percent of federal
returns included 1.1 million filers earning
above $181,713 in 1992. This relatively small
group of taxpayers earned 14.2 percent of all
Figure 1
Percent of Federal Income Taxes Paid by Income Group, 1982 and 1992
~~19 0 2.
36.1
45.9
S48.6
D 1982
U] 1992
_______________________________________57.65 2
78.4
- 92.7
94.9
ij 517.3
0.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 50.0 60.0
Percent of All Federal Income Taxes
70.0 80.0 90.0 100.0
Source: Internal Recvenue Service.
By Chris R. Edwards
Economist
Tax Foundation
Top 10%
Top 5%
Top 10%
Top 25%
Top 50%
Bottom 50%
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