[lbo-talk] Progressive taxation vs flat tax

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Aug 5 07:24:19 PDT 2004


B. wrote:


>Doug, what is your source for the stat that 2% - 3% of
>US households have incomes of $200,000 + ??

There's no simple source for high income info. Tax info excludes low-income people, and the Census "top-codes" its data, treating all income over a certain limit as the equivalent of that limit - to protect privacy, they say. Besides, very rich people don't answer questionnaires. The Fed does its Survey of Consumer Finances every three years, which does hit high-income households, but their income distribution data is very sparse. Any stat-heads are welcome to run that data and report.

According to the Census <http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/h0101.html>, the lowest income in the top 5% was $150,002 in 2002. So I was just guessing based on that. 3-4% might be more accurate.

Doug



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