{"chart":{"slug":"top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax","title":"What share of federal income tax do the top 1% of earners pay?","takeaway":"The 1% of tax returns with the highest incomes paid 38.4% of all federal income tax in tax year 2023, up from 33.2% in 2001. Their share reached 45.8% in 2021, a year of unusually large capital gains, and it tends to rise and fall with the stock market because top incomes include more investment income. Returns are ranked by adjusted gross income, leaving out those of people claimed as dependents. Income tax is what returns owed after credits, never below zero, not counting payroll taxes; tax law also changed over these years, notably in 2013 and 2018. IRS figures are estimates from a sample of returns.","topic":"Income tax","chart_type":"line","ranking":false,"x_label":"Tax year","y_label":"Top 1%'s share of all federal income tax paid, %","unit":"percent","points_count":23,"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":"2026-10-17T18:50:41.635Z","url":"https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax","api_url":"https://chart.ly/api/v1/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax","csv_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax/data.csv","image_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax/image.png","embed_url":"https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax/embed","credit":"IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile), via Chartly (https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax)","credit_html":"IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile), via \u003ca href=\"https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax\"\u003eChartly\u003c/a\u003e","average_label":null,"zero_axis":true,"data":[{"label":"2001","value":33.22},{"label":"2002","value":33.09},{"label":"2003","value":33.69},{"label":"2004","value":36.28},{"label":"2005","value":38.78},{"label":"2006","value":39.36},{"label":"2007","value":39.81},{"label":"2008","value":37.51},{"label":"2009","value":36.34},{"label":"2010","value":37.38},{"label":"2011","value":35.06},{"label":"2012","value":38.09},{"label":"2013","value":37.8},{"label":"2014","value":39.48},{"label":"2015","value":39.04},{"label":"2016","value":37.32},{"label":"2017","value":38.47},{"label":"2018","value":40.08},{"label":"2019","value":38.77},{"label":"2020","value":42.31},{"label":"2021","value":45.78},{"label":"2022","value":40.43},{"label":"2023","value":38.4}],"annotations":[]},"docs":"https://chart.ly/developers","terms":"Free to use with credit: wherever you show or quote a chart's data, name Chartly with a link to that chart's url (each chart's credit line does both) and credit its source as its license asks.","credit":"IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile), via Chartly (https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax)"}