IRS Releases Spring 2011 SOI Bulletin

The IRS's Statistics of Income Division yesterday released (IR-2011-67) the Spring 2011 SOI Bulletin (Vol. 30, No. 4), with these articles:

• High-Income Tax Returns for 2008 (p. 5), by Justin Bryan
• Individual Income Tax Returns, by Age of Primary Taxpayer, Tax Years 1997 and 2007 (p. 55), by Jeff Curry & Jonathan Dent
• Individual Income Tax Returns, by State, 2007 (p. 174), by Taquesha Cain
• Foreign Recipients of U.S. Income, 2008 (p. 235), by Scott Luttrell
• International Boycott Reports, 2007 and 2008 (p. 250), by Melissa Costa
• 2008 Gifts (p. 255), by Melissa J. Belvedere

Bloomberg, High-Income, No-Tax Returns Almost Doubled in 2008, IRS Says:

The number of people who reported incomes of at least $200,000 and paid no U.S. taxes jumped 79.5% in 2008 from 2007, according to an IRS study.

In all, 18,783 people filed U.S. tax returns with adjusted gross incomes of at least $200,000 and used legal deductions, exemptions and credits to avoid owing any U.S. income taxes. That represents 0.43% of high-income taxpayers, the biggest percentage of non-payers in an IRS study released yesterday that includes data going back to 1977.

Even with the dollar threshold being held constant for inflation, the 2008 totals and percentages were the highest on record. The percentage of non-payers in 2008 almost doubled from the 0.23% of filers who reported no income tax liability in 2007, before a recession-fueled decline in tax revenue.