IRS Releases Spring 2012 SOI Bulletin

The IRS's Statistics of Income Division yesterday released (IR-2012-58) the Spring 2012 SOI Bulletin (Vol. 31, No. 4), with these articles:

• High-Income Tax Returns for 2009 (p.6), by Justin Bryan:  For 2009, there were 3,924,489 individual income tax returns reporting AGI of $200,000 or more, and 3,975,288 with expanded income of $200,000 or more. These returns represent, respectively, 2.793% and 2.830% of all returns for 2009.
• Individual Noncash Contributions, 2009 (p. 62), by Pearson Liddell & Janette Wilson:  For Tax Year 2009, 21.9 million individual taxpayers who itemized deductions reported $31.8 billion in deductions for noncash charitable contributions.
• Accumulation and Distribution of Individual Retirement Arrangements, 2008 (p.89), by Victoria L. Bryant:  The year-end fair market value of all IRAs fell from $4.7 trillion in 2007 to $3.7 trillion in 2008, a 22.5% decrease.
• Foreign Recipients of U.S. Income, 2009 (p.105), by Scott Luttrell:  U.S.-source income payments to foreign persons and taxes withheld declined across nearly all categories of income in Calendar Year 2009, as the U.S. economy was in the midst of the Great Recession. Some $546.5 billion in U.S.-source income payments were made to foreign recipients in 2009, a decrease of 20.7% from the 2008 total. Taxes withheld on U.S.-source income paid to foreign persons experienced a similar decline to $7.2 billion, down 21.4% from 2008.
• The Distribution of Corporate Income: Tabulations from the Schedule M-3, 2004-2008 (p.128), by Caitlin Bokulic, Erin Henry & George Plesko:  Corporations determine the amount of income earned during a year using a variety of reporting standards. These differences in reporting standards have led to differences in the amount of book and taxable income that is reported by firms.  To investigate the patterns and sources of these differences, this article examines a sample of firms that filed a Form 1120 Schedule M-3 during  2004-2008.  The sample was disaggregated into statutory tax brackets to show the magnitude of aggregate measures of both financial statement worldwide and domestic income and taxable income to better understand the population of corporate tax filers.
• 2009 Gifts (p.142), by Melissa J. Belvedere:  There were 223,093 [gift tax] returns filed during 2010, reporting a total of $37.9 billion in assets, which were transferred to 867,507 gift recipients, mostly children and grandchildren.  The majority of gifts given were in the form of cash, although real estate and stock also comprised significant percentages of total assets.
• The Income and Wealth of 2007 Estate Tax Decedents (p.151), by Barry Johnson, Brian Raub & nd Joseph Newcomb:  21% of estate tax decedents who died in 2007 reported income in the top 1% of the adjusted gross income distribution for Tax Year 2006.