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Individual Income Tax Shares, Tax Year 2017 PDF

By Adrian Dungan

For Tax Year (TY) 2017, nondependent taxpayers filed 143.3 million individual income tax returns, an increase of 1.7 percent from the 140.9 million returns filed for TY 2016. Total AGI increased 7.7 percent to $10.94 trillion in 2017, while total income tax increased 11 percent to $1.6 trillion.

For TY 2017, the top 0.001 percent of individual income tax returns had an AGI of at least $63.4 million, the peak during the 10 years of this study, which was an increase of 19.6 percent from the previous year when the top 0.001 percent of tax returns had an AGI of at least $53.1 million.  For TY 2017, the amount of AGI needed for inclusion in the top 50 percent of returns was $41,740. These returns accounted for 88.7 percent of total AGI and paid 96.9 percent of total income tax.

Related Link: Individual Income Tax Rates and Tax Shares

Foreign Recipients of U.S. Income, Calendar Year 2017 PDF

By Scott Luttrell

U.S.-source income payments to foreign persons, as reported on Foreign Person's U.S.-Source Income Subject to Withholding (Form 1042-S), rose to $882.1 billion for Calendar Year 2017. This represents an increase of 3.4 percent from 2016. Withholding taxes on this income rose by just 0.2 percent as 86.5 percent of all U.S.-source income paid to for­eign persons was exempt from withholding tax. Taxes on the residual U.S.-source income subject to tax were withheld at an average rate of 16.4 percent.

Related Link: Foreign Recipients of U.S. Income Statistics

Implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017: An SOI Response PDF

By Martha Harris

This article describes how SOI responded to the need to implement provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which became law on December 21, 2017, on its studies in the corporation, individual, international, and tax exempt areas. Due to the magnitude of TCJA's scope, SOI employed strategies and tools beyond the traditional procedures for developing and preparing each year's study.  SOI also collaborated with other areas of IRS to identify emerging trends based on early filing season data and captured these trends in data tables and graphical presentations for IRS leadership.

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