What share of federal income tax do the top 1% of earners pay?

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.

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Key facts

Measure: Top 1%'s share of all federal income tax paid, %. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2023, is 38.4%.
  • That is up 5.2 percentage points from 33.2% in 2001.
  • The highest was 45.8% in 2021.
  • The lowest was 33.1% in 2002.

This chart is one of the 50 in The U.S. in 50 charts, 2026, a yearly report of the key numbers on how the country is doing.

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Source and date

Source
IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile)
License
Public domain (U.S. government work)
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “What share of federal income tax do the top 1% of earners pay?” Chart. Data: IRS Statistics of Income, Table 4.1 (individual returns by income percentile), https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-individual-statistical-tables-by-tax-rate-and-income-percentile (data as of December 31, 2023). https://chart.ly/charts/top-1-percent-share-of-income-tax (accessed November 6, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Tax year Top 1%'s share of all federal income tax paid, %
2001 33.22
2002 33.09
2003 33.69
2004 36.28
2005 38.78
2006 39.36
2007 39.81
2008 37.51
2009 36.34
2010 37.38
2011 35.06
2012 38.09
2013 37.8
2014 39.48
2015 39.04
2016 37.32
2017 38.47
2018 40.08
2019 38.77
2020 42.31
2021 45.78
2022 40.43
2023 38.4

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