A reader sent this story from the Wall Street Journal:
The nation's top 400 taxpayers made more than $263 million on average in 2006, as the stock market was rallying, but paid income taxes at the lowest rate in the 15 years that the Internal Revenue Service has tracked such data, according to figures released Thursday.
Each year, the IRS releases information on the so-called Fortunate 400, the 400 U.S. taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross income.
The average income of this group was the highest recorded by the IRS and was up from $213.9 million the year before. In constant dollars, the average income of the top 400 taxpayers nearly quadrupled from 1992, the first year such data were collected. The group's share of the adjusted gross income of all taxpayers in the country nearly doubled between 2002 and 2006, the data show -- from 0.69% to 1.31%.
The group's average income tax rate was 17.2%. in 2006, down 1% from 2005, and down from a high of 29.9% in 1995.
Cuts in the capital gains tax rate to 15% account for much of the drop; 64% of the income reported by the Fortunate 400 in 2006 was subject to that rate.
Of the 400 taxpayers, 31 paid taxes at average rates between 0% and 10%, while 47 paid closer to the top bracket income tax rates of between 30% and 35%.
But we shouldn't complain at the rising gap between income and taxes at the top. Heck, things might be different when 2008 numbers come out, and meanwhile, the rest of us got economic growth and jobs creation from all that investment.
