Average Federal Taxes by Income Group
June 2010

This page contains CBO's estimates of average federal tax rates (tax rates as a percentage of income) paid by households in various income categories for the four largest sources of federal revenues--individual income taxes, social insurance (payroll) taxes, corporate income taxes, and excise taxes--as well as the average rate for the four taxes combined. The page also contains estimates of average before- and after-tax household income; the number of households in each income category; shares of taxes, income, and households for each income group; information relating to the methodology used to construct the estimates; supplementary estimates for different types of households; and estimates of the number of households that pay more in payroll taxes than they do in income taxes.

As this bar chart shows, effective federal tax rates--taxes as a percentage of income--rise across the income distribution, from 4.3 percent for the bottom fifth of households to 25.8 for the top fifth.

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Overview of Current Estimates

Average Federal Tax Rates in 2007  data

Average Federal Tax Rates and Income, by Income Category (1979-2007)

Average Tax Ratespdfdata

Share of Taxes Paidpdfdata

Average Before-Tax Household Incomepdfdata

Average After-Tax Household Incomepdfdata

Shares of Before-Tax Incomepdfdata

Shares of After-Tax Incomepdfdata

Income Ranges for Each Income Classpdfdata

All of the Above Informationpdfdata

Supplementary Information

Additional Data on Sources of Income and High-Income Households, 1979-2005pdfdata

Distribution of Income and Taxes by Type of Household (1979-2007)

Households Paying More in Payroll Taxes Than Income Taxes (2007)pdfdata

Median Before-Tax and After-Tax Household Income, 1979-2007pdfdata

Sources of Income by Income Category, 1979-2007pdfdata

Methodology

Issues to Consider for Distributional Analysis (CBO Director’s Blog, December 2007)

Effective Tax Rates: Comparing Annual and Multiyear Measures (January 2005)