{"chart":{"slug":"income-tax-share-by-income-group","title":"How much of the federal income tax does each income group pay?","takeaway":"In tax year 2023, the 1% of tax returns with the highest incomes paid 38.4% of all federal income tax, the next 9% paid 32.1%, the next 40% paid 26.2% and the bottom 50% paid 3.3%. The top 1% reported 20.6% of all income and the bottom 50% reported 12.3%. Groups are tax returns ranked by adjusted gross income, leaving out returns of people claimed as someone's dependent; the top 1% started at $675,602 of income and the top half at $53,801. Income tax here is what returns owed after credits, never below zero; refundable credits paid out as refunds and payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare aren't counted. IRS figures are estimates from a sample of returns and come out about two years after the tax year.","topic":"Income tax","chart_type":"bar","ranking":false,"x_label":"Tax returns, by income","y_label":"Share of all federal income tax paid, %","unit":"percent","points_count":4,"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":"2026-09-27T05:20:27.698Z","url":"https://chart.ly/charts/income-tax-share-by-income-group","api_url":"https://chart.ly/api/v1/charts/income-tax-share-by-income-group","csv_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/income-tax-share-by-income-group/data.csv","image_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/income-tax-share-by-income-group/image.png","embed_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/income-tax-share-by-income-group/embed","average_label":null,"zero_axis":true,"data":[{"label":"Top 1%","value":38.4},{"label":"Next 9%","value":32.14},{"label":"Next 40%","value":26.2},{"label":"Bottom 50%","value":3.26}],"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/income-tax-share-by-income-group)"}