Who Pays The Tax Burden?

I have located a recent study written up by the Tax Foundation - see it at Newest Data Show High-Income Taxpayers Earning and Paying More; Top One Percent Paid 33.2 Percent of 1997's Federal Individual Income Taxes

Approximately 12,000 paid 63% of the entire national personal income taxes; These were the families with over $79,000 of Adjusted Gross income.
Approximately 30,000 paid nearly 82% of the entire national personal income taxes; These were the families with over $48,000 of Adjusted Gross income.

Another thought on this subject: Who is the IRS going to target to collect the most amount of money with the least cost? If your family is included in one of the above groups and by chance or bad luck falls behind on your taxes, is the IRS going to target your collections more robustly?

Here is an excerpt from that article:

Quotation from the study

According to preliminary data released by the Internal Revenue Service, the top-earning one percent of U.S. taxpayers (annual income over $250,736) made 17.4 percent of the income earned in 1997 and paid 33.2 percent of the total federal individual income taxes collected that year. This fraction of the tax burden paid by the top one percent--nearly a third of the total--is up from 32.3 percent for tax year 1996 and up from 24.8 percent for tax year 1987 (see accompanying table).

At the other end of the income spectrum, the bottom 50 percent of the nation's taxpayers earned only 13.8 percent of all income in 1997, but they paid an even smaller fraction of the federal individual income taxes collected--4.3 percent. (Data for 1997 is the latest available.)

The data come from a new report titled, "Distribution of the Federal Individual Income Tax," number 92 in the Foundation's Special Report series, and written by Senior Economist Patrick Fleenor.

"Americans at the upper end of the income scale continue to bear an increasing share of the total federal individual income tax burden," observed Fleenor, who compiled the data. "Continued strong economic growth and a progressive tax system inevitably result in a steady shifting of the tax burden up the income scale."

1997
	Number of Returns (000)	AGI ($000,000)	Income Taxes Paid ($000,000)	Group's Share of Total AGI	Group's Share of Total Taxes	Income Split Point	Average Tax Rate
All Taxpayers	121,506	5,023,492	727,303	100.0%	100.0%	-	14.5%
Top 1%	1,215	872,834	241,241	17.4%	33.2%	above $250,736	27.6%
Top 5%	6,075	1,597,124	377,244	31.8%	51.9%	above $108,048	23.6%
Top 10%	12,151	2,151,426	459,643	42.8%	63.2%	above $79,212	21.4%
Top 25%	30,377	3,267,638	594,008	65.0%	81.7%	Above $48,173	18.2%
Top 50%	60,753	4,328,031	696,165	86.2%	95.7%	Above $24,393	16.1%
Bottom 50%	60,753	695,461	31,138	13.8%	4.3%	Below $24,393	4.5%