Business Reference Report/Data File: The Tax Foundation Releases “Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2015 Update”

New today from The Tax Foundation.

• Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2015 Update (12 pages; PDF)

• Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2015 Update (.xlsx)

Highlights From the Document and Spreadsheet

• In 2013, 138.3 million taxpayers reported earning $9.03 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.23 trillion in income taxes.

• Every income group besides the top 1 percent of taxpayers reported higher income in 2013 than the previous year. All income groups paid higher taxes in 2013 than the previous year.

• The share of income earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers fell to 19.0 percent in 2013. Their share of federal income taxes fell slightly to 37.8 percent.

• In 2012, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers (69.2 million filers) paid 97.2 percent of all income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.8 percent.

• The top 1 percent (1.3 million filers) paid a greater share of income taxes (37.8 percent) than the bottom 90 percent (124.5 million filers) combined (30.2 percent).

• The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a higher effective income tax rate than any other group, at 27.1 percent, which is over 8 times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.3 percent).

Also Recently Released by The Tax Foundation
Full Text Report: Income Taxes Illustrated

Income Taxes Illustrated is a visual guide to the federal income tax. Its goal is to provide policymakers and voters with the facts and context necessary to understand the income tax system as a whole.

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