According to Gerald Prante, Senior Economist with the Tax Foundation
The latest release of Internal Revenue Service data on individual income taxes comes from calendar year 2006, a year in which the economy remained healthy and continued to grow, increasing individual income tax collections along with overall average effective tax rates.
This year’s numbers show that both the income share earned by the top 1 percent of tax returns and the tax share paid by that top 1 percent have once again reached all-time highs. In 2006, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 39.9 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 22.1 percent of adjusted gross income, both of which are significantly higher than 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes.
The IRS data also shows increases in individual incomes across all income groups (see Table 3). Just as the highest earners lost the biggest percentage of their incomes during the recession of 2001, so they have prospered the most as the economy continued to rebound through 2006. For example, from 2000 to 2002, the AGI of the top 1 percent of tax returns fell by over 26 percent. In that same period, the AGI of the bottom 50 percent of tax returns actually increased by 4.3 percent. However, since 2002, as the recession has ended, AGI has risen by over 81 percent for the top 1 percent (an average of over 20 percent per year) and 17 percent (an average of around 4 percent per year) for the bottom 50 percent.
In sum, between 2000 and 2006, pre-tax income for the top 1 percent of tax returns grew by 34 percent, while pre-tax income for the bottom 50 percent increased by 22 percent. All figures are nominal (not adjusted for inflation).
This pattern of income loss and growth at the top of the income spectrum is the same during every recession and recovery. The net result has also been a sharp rise in federal government tax revenue from 2003 to 2006 compared to previous years.