Wealthy Non-Taxpayers — From 60 to Thousands in 30 Years

by Noni Mausa

Wealthy Non-Taxpayers — From 60 to Thousands in 30 Years

Bruce Bartlett provides the numbers, but it’s so much easier to see in a chart.

Wealthy Non-Taxpayers 1977 to 2009, showing incomes over $200,000 per year.  Blue is percentage of total households over $200,000 paying no taxes, purple is numbers of high-income households paying no taxes. Numbers from chart here: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/rich-nontaxpayers/, drawn
from IRS data.

On this chart, the percentage appears relatively stable with a low of 0.066 to a high of 0.529 (66 per 100,000 to 529 per 100,000) but actually that’s an eightfold increase, mostly accruing after 2004.
The numbers of households, however, leap like a gazelle after 2004, reaching a high of 22,000 high income households paying no taxes, from a low of only 60 in 1977.