The Internal Revenue Service uses percentile categories (Top 1%, 95% – 99%, 90% – 95%, etc.) for purposes of analyzing income tax data. A total of 141,070,972 tax returns were filed by individuals in 2007. The IRS analyzes tax return statistics to determine various percentages. For example, this table indicates that the top 10% of taxpayers paid $794 billion, which accounted for 71.2% of the total income taxes paid by individuals in 2007.

• » Comments (6)