Income Taxes:

Who Pays and How Much?

Spring brings not only March winds and April showers, but also tax-filing season. Whenever the topic of taxes comes up, it usually makes people wonder who pays and how much. That’s a fair question, and a close look at some federal income tax facts may provide some surprising answers. The table indicates who is paying federal individual income taxes based on income groups. Perhaps more important, it reveals the relative percentage of taxes paid by these different groups of taxpayers. (Note that this chart only provides information on individual federal income tax and does not include other taxes, such as payroll taxes or state income taxes.)

Federal tax receipts for 2003 totaled $1.7 trillion, with the largest share—43 percent—coming from individual income taxes (IIT). As shown in the table, receipts from IIT totaled $747.9 billion, the result of 128.6 million filed returns that reported total adjusted gross income (AGI) of $6.3 trillion.1 Thus, the ratio of taxes to income, known as the “total average tax rate,” was 11.9 percent. Undertaking the same calculation for earlier years, one finds that the average tax rate for 2003 is the lowest rate for 1985-2003.

From Top to Bottom

To answer the question of who pays and how much, however, we need to take a closer look at the data, which indicate income tax burdens for specific income groups. Let’s start with the top 50 percent income group, compared to the bottom 50 percent. The former group accounted for 86 percent of income (AGI) and paid 96.5 percent of taxes (IIT), while the latter accounted for 14 percent of income (AGI) and paid 3.5 percent of taxes (IIT). The average tax rate for the top 50 percent was 13.4 percent, while the rate for the bottom 50 percent was 3 percent. Both of these rates for 2003 were at their lowest levels for the period of 1985-2003.

The Top Half Dissected

Next, let’s look at groups in the top 50 percent. The top 25 percent accounted for 64.9 percent of AGI and paid 83.9 percent of taxes (IIT). Their tax rate was 15.4 percent. Meanwhile, the top 10 percent accounted for 42.4 percent of AGI and paid 65.8 percent of taxes (IIT). Their tax rate was 18.5 percent. Comparing the top 25 percent with the top 10 percent, it is clear that those with higher incomes pay higher average tax rates. This fact continues to hold as we examine those with even higher income, which is a characteristic of a progressive tax system (i.e., the income tax rate increases as income increases). The top 5 percent experienced an average tax rate of 20.7 percent, and the top 1 percent paid a 24.3 percent rate, roughly eight times the average rate of the bottom 50 percent. The rate of 24.3 percent is approximately twice the average tax rate for all taxpayers.

The Perfect Tax Structure

It has proved to be a major challenge in the United States to reach political consensus on a tax system that simultaneously:

provides desirable incentives to work, save and invest;
is viewed as fair;
is easy to understand; and
generates sufficient revenues to fund spending decisions.

Improving our knowledge of the existing tax system, though, is a good place to start.

1 The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) defines adjusted gross income as “total income” (as defined by the tax code) less “statutory adjustments.” (View specific income for each income group.)

Income Group	Number of Returns	AGI ($ millions)	Income taxes paid ($ millions)	Group's share of total AGI (%)	Group's share of income taxes (%)	Average tax rate (%)
Federal Income Tax Burden by Income Group, 2003
All taxpayers	128,609,786	6,287,586	747,939	100	100	11.9
Top 1%	1,286,098	1,054,567	256,340	16.77	34.27	24.31
Top 5%	6,430,489	1,960,676	406,597	31.18	54.36	20.74
Top 10%	12,860,979	2,663,470	492,452	42.36	65.84	18.49
Top 25%	32,152,447	4,078,277	627,380	64.86	83.88	15.38
Top 50%	64,304,893	5,407,851	722,027	86.01	96.54	13.35
Bottom 50%	64,304,893	879,735	25,912	13.99	3.46	2.95
SOURCE: Internal Revenue Service, Individual Income Tax Returns with Positive Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), Tables 5 and 6; www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html.

Classroom Discussion
The top 50 percent income group pays what percent of all individual income taxes? What is a progressive tax system? What are some generally accepted criteria for a tax system? What did you learn about taxes that you didn’t know before reading this article?

This article was adapted from Income Taxes: Who Pays and How Much? which was written by St. Louis Fed Vice President and Deputy Director of Research Cletus C. Coughlin and was published in the March 2006 issue of National Economic Trends, a St. Louis Fed publication.

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