super rich

Tax Day Less Painful For Top 400 Income Earners

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In honor of tax day, we have quite the study on taxes. 45% of Americans pay zero tax. Then the top 400 income Americans pay just 17%, not 35%, in taxes. Why? In part, capital gains, which is taxed at a 15% rate. That's Wall Street profits folks.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

That said, watch out, Republicans are out to give more tax breaks to the wealthy. Bear in mind most of America is poor, with the median income being a little over $26,000 dollars.

So, statistics like the below disguise the fact the super-rich pretty much already have most of the money in the United States.

More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007. More than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent. Still, the wealthy have access to much more lucrative tax breaks than people with lower incomes.

Rich Get Richer While Americans Lose Their Jobs, Houses, Savings and Income

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While millions of Americans lost their jobs, their homes, their savings, their retirement....the rich got richer. That's right, during 2009, millionaires increased by 17.1%.

The world’s population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) grew 17.1% to 10.0 million in 2009.The world’s population of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) returned to 10 million in 2009, increasing by 17.1% over 2008.
HNWI financial wealth increased 18.9% from 2008 levels to $39 trillion. After losing 24.0% in 2008, Ultra-HNWIs saw wealth rebound 21.5% in 2009.Ultra-HNWIs increased their wealth by 21.5% in 2009. In terms of the total Global HNWI population remains highly concentrated with the U.S, Japan and Germany accounting for 53.5% of the world’s HNWI population, down slightly from 2008.

North America specifically, the rich got richer by 17%.

In North America, the ranks of the rich rose 17 percent and their wealth grew 18 percent to $10.7 trillion.

The United States was home to the most millionaires in 2009 -- 2.87 million -- followed by Japan with 1.65 million, Germany with 861,000, and China with 477,000.

Switzerland had the highest concentration of millionaires: nearly 35 for every 1,000 adults.