Top 400 Earners in U.S. Averaged $345 Million in Income in 2007, IRS Says

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Top 400 Earners in U.S Averaged $345 Million in 2007, IRS Says
By Ryan J. Donmoyer


Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The 400 highest-earning U.S. households reported an average of $345 million in income in 2007, up 31 percent from a year earlier, IRS statistics show.

The average tax rate for the households fell to the lowest in almost 20 years.

The figures for 2007, the last year of an economic expansion, show that the average income reported by the top 400 earners more than doubled from $131.1 million in 2001. That year, Congress adopted tax cuts urged by then-President George W. Bush that Democrats say disproportionately benefits the wealthy.

Each household in the top 400 of earners paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992, the Internal Revenue Service statistics show. Their average effective tax rate was about half the 29.4 percent in 1993, the first year of President Bill Clinton’s administration, when taxes were increased.

The statistics underscore “two long-term trends: that income at the very top has exploded and their taxes have been cut dramatically,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research group that supports increasing taxes on high-income individuals.

The top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992, the data show. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=ahZu17Yy1HvA