America's REAL "parasites"

[Igel]

11. And over 2 million

with income over $60k to $103k.

Those numbers appear to be for 2011, and it would be really interesting to see who had potential net losses (negative income) for 2010 and 2009 that they spread out into successive years.

Back when I started filing income tax returns in the '70s income averaging was a possibility for nearly anybody. Handy, that. You have a good job for two years and unemployed the third--or the other way around--you could average incomes and lower your overall tax burden. Now you can only bring forward capital losses, IIRC, but capital gains have to be taxed at the higher rates in the year they were taken.

Yes, at the time elimination of income averaging, something even my own parents and brother did, was billed as elimination of loopholes and getting tax payers to pay their fair share. (I rather liked the idea. The year my income tripled because I got a job better than being a part-time dishwasher but which at least allowed me to take leftovers home for free was the first year that income averaging was *not* allowed. Sad face.)

I'm going to guess that the high incomes are mostly covered by capital losses or tax-exempt muni funds (which are hardly a bad thing to make federal-tax exempt). The lower income non-payers are going to have other kinds of financial problems--perhaps some capital losses, but more likely business losses or medical/moving/interest/dependent deductions, some of which are available to the bottom 50% and some of which aren't.