More Taxes?

Think you pay too much in taxes?

​The IRS recently released statistics for the 2016 filing year. See how you compare.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. And it's easy to feel like we each pay more than our fair share. But how much do we really pay?

According to the IRS the top 1% of individual filers paid over 37% of all federal income taxes in 2016. Wonder who is in that group? Your adjusted gross income would have to be almost $481,000 to make it into that elite category.

Broadening our view a bit, we find the top 5% of individual filers paid over 58% of all federal income taxes. To be in the top 5% your adjusted gross income had to be just about $198,000.

The top 10% of individual filers had adjusted gross incomes of about $140,000. They paid almost 69.5% of all federal income taxes.

The bottom 50% of individual filers paid just 3% of the federal income taxes. That means half of our population paid little or no income taxes. Many paid $0 income tax and still received a refund, due to credits such as the Earned Income Credit and the Child Tax Credit. This, of course, is not free money. It comes from the taxes paid into the treasury.