{"chart":{"slug":"average-income-tax-rate-by-income","title":"What average income tax rate does each income group pay?","takeaway":"In tax year 2023, the 0.1% of tax returns with the highest incomes paid 26.7% of their adjusted gross income in federal income tax, on average. The rate was 25.9% for the rest of the top 1%, 16.8% for the next 9%, 10.6% for the next 15%, 7.7% for the next 25% and 3.7% for the bottom half; across all returns it was 14.1%. The average rate is total income tax divided by total income for each group, which is lower than the top bracket rate (37%) because lower rates apply to the first dollars of income and to long-term capital gains and most dividends. It counts income tax after credits, never below zero, and leaves out payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, which weigh more on lower and middle incomes, as well as returns of people claimed as dependents.","topic":"Income tax","chart_type":"bar","ranking":false,"x_label":"Tax returns, by income","y_label":"Average federal income tax rate, % of income","unit":"percent","points_count":6,"source":{"name":"IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile)","url":"https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-tax-rate-and-income-percentile"},"license":{"name":"Public domain (U.S. government work)","url":"https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright"},"data_as_of":"2023-12-31","updated_at":"2026-09-27T05:20:26.742Z","url":"https://chart.ly/charts/average-income-tax-rate-by-income","api_url":"https://chart.ly/api/v1/charts/average-income-tax-rate-by-income","csv_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/average-income-tax-rate-by-income/data.csv","image_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/average-income-tax-rate-by-income/image.png","embed_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/average-income-tax-rate-by-income/embed","average_label":null,"zero_axis":true,"data":[{"label":"Top 0.1%","value":26.65},{"label":"Next 0.9%","value":25.9},{"label":"Next 9%","value":16.82},{"label":"Next 15%","value":10.63},{"label":"Next 25%","value":7.69},{"label":"Bottom 50%","value":3.73}],"annotations":[]},"docs":"https://chart.ly/developers","credit":"IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile), via Chartly (https://chart.ly/charts/average-income-tax-rate-by-income)"}