Data on the 400 Individual Income Tax Returns Reporting the Largest Adjusted Gross Incomes

This release contains four tables which contain information from the Top 400 Individual Income Tax Returns for each of Tax Years 1992 through 2014. Table 1 contains frequencies, money amounts, and average dollar amounts for the major income, deduction, and tax credits reported as part of the Form 1040 (U.S. Individual Income Tax Return). Table 2 shows ranges of marginal tax rate for the various statutory rates (including the alternative minimum tax rates) that were in effect for Tax Years 1992 through 2014 while Table 3 shows the range of average tax rates up to 35 percent and over, computed as total income tax divided by adjusted gross income.

The data in Tables 1–3 are based on the individual returns with the largest adjusted gross income reported each specific year shown and do not necessarily reflect the same taxpayers over the 23-year time period reflected. Therefore, Table 4 is available to present the number of times an individual return appeared among the 400 largest adjusted gross incomes for each of tax years 1992 through 2014.

Beginning with Tax Tear 2014, the annual October release of Individual Income Tax Return percentile data now includes a new table (Table 3) that contains all of the item content found in the top 400 data release. In addition, this new table shows data at the .001 percentile level—which in 2014 represented the top 1,396 returns. This is a more analytically useful tabulation compared to the top 400 tabulation in that it provides a longitudinally consistent data point relative to the entire percentile distribution. As the number of returns increases with the growth of the economy, the number of returns in the .001 percentile will increase proportionally as well thus allowing for a consistent high-income data series.

As a consequence, the top 400 data series will be discontinued after Tax Year 2014.

Note: Percentage values listed for Tax Years 2010 and 2012 in Table 1 were updated on 01/04/2016.

Current release:

2014–1992 PDF

Prior releases:

2009 PDF 2008 PDF 2007 PDF 2006 PDF

The 400 Individual Income Tax Returns Reporting the Highest Adjusted Gross Income Each Year, 1992–2000 PDF

Data Release by Michael Parisi and Michael Strudler, SOI