ARE YOU RICH? There's been an awful lot of talk over the last year or so about 'taxing the rich' so let's ask the question: "Who's rich?" I used Political Calculations' household income calculator for data and subdivided the income distribution into three categories: rich (those in the top quarter); poor (those in the bottom quarter) and middle income (the middle 50%).

Each category was further subdivided as shown in the chart below. The upper and lower quartiles were subdivided at the extremes (5% and 10% levels), and I added the 1/3 and 2/3 distribution limits to the middle income bracket to accentuate the asymmetry of the distribution.


Here's a chart showing the percentage of income of each household in $10,000 increments up to $300,000. Above about $200,000 the incremental percentage is less that 1%, and less than 0.1% above $350,000. The skew (asymmetry) is obvious, and combined with the progressivity of the income tax system explains why such a large minority of Americans pay no income taxes.


There are roughly 120 million households in America, of which a bit less than 3 million earn over $300,000. If each of those households were taxed an additional $10,000, it would bring in about $30 billion to the government coffers annually, about 3% of the annual deficit which has averaged over $1 trillion for the past 3 years of the Obama administration.