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SOI Tax Stats - SOI Bulletin: Spring 2012

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Statistics of Income (SOI) Bulletin - Spring 2012
(entire publication in PDF)

High-Income Tax Returns for 2009
By Justin Bryan

For 2009, there were 3,924,489 individual income tax returns reporting adjusted gross income (AGI) of $200,000 or more, and 3,975,288 with expanded income of $200,000 or more. These returns represent, respectively, 2.793 percent and 2.830 percent of all returns for 2009.

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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Individual Noncash Contributions, 2009
By Pearson Liddell and Janette Wilson

For Tax Year 2009, 21.9 million individual taxpayers who itemized deductions reported $31.8 billion in deductions for noncash charitable contributions. Of these taxpayers, 6.7 million reported $28 billion in deductions for charitable contributions on Form 8283, Noncash Charitable Contributions. This form is used by individual taxpayers when the amount of taxpayer deductions for all noncash donations on Schedule A, Itemized Deductions, exceeds $500.

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The year-end fair market value of all Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) fell from $4.7 trillion in 2007 to $3.7 trillion in 2008, a 22.5-percent decrease. While the overwhelming majority of this decrease can be attributed to factors beyond the scope of this article, namely declines in the values of the financial assets held in IRA accounts, a small portion of the decline can be explained by factors apparent from the data presented in this article.

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Foreign Recipients of U.S. Income, 2009 By Scott Luttrell
U.S.-source income payments to foreign persons and taxes withheld declined across nearly all categories of income in Calendar Year 2009, as the U.S. economy was in the midst of the Great Recession. Some $546.5 billion in U.S.-source income payments were made to foreign recipients in 2009, a decrease of 20.7 percent from the 2008 total. Taxes withheld on U.S.-source income paid to foreign persons experienced a similar decline to $7.2 billion, down 21.4 percent from 2008.	Excel Tables:	Related Link:

The Distribution of Corporate Income: Tabulations from the Schedule M-3, 2004-2008 By Caitlin Bokulic, Erin Henry, and George Plesko
Corporations determine the amount of income earned during a year using a variety of reporting standards. These differences in reporting standards have led to differences in the amount of book and taxable income that is reported by firms. To investigate the patterns and sources of these differences, this article examines a sample of firms that filed a Form 1120 Schedule M-3 during 2004-2008. The sample was disaggregated into statutory tax brackets to show the magnitude of aggregate measures of both financial statement worldwide and domestic income and taxable income to better understand the population of corporate tax filers.	Excel Tables:	Related Link:

2009 Gifts By Melissa J. Belvedere
The Federal gift tax is one component of the Federal transfer tax system, which also includes the estate tax and the generation-skipping transfer tax. The gift tax is levied on gifts given during a donor’s life, known as inter vivos gifts. Donors file Form 709, United States Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return, to report gifts made during a given calendar year. The data presented here are for gifts given in 2009 and reported on forms filed with the Internal Revenue Service during 2010. There were 223,093 returns filed during 2010, reporting a total of $37.9 billion in assets, which were transferred to 867,507 gift recipients, mostly children and grandchildren. The majority of gifts given were in the form of cash, although real estate and stock also comprised significant percentages of total assets.	Excel Tables:	Related Link:

The Income and Wealth of 2007 Estate Tax Decedents
By Barry Johnson, Brian Raub, and Joseph Newcomb

The Statistics of Income (SOI) Division of the Internal Revenue Service has periodically combined wealth data reported on Federal estate tax returns, filed for relatively wealthy decedents, with income tax data reported by these decedents for the last full year prior to death. Such linked datasets provide unique windows into the relationship between realized income and wealth.
In this preliminary look at a new dataset combining wealth data and 1 year of income data, we have shown that almost 21 percent of estate tax decedents who died in 2007 reported income in the top 1 percent of the adjusted gross income distribution for Tax Year 2006.

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In the Next Issue
The following articles are tentatively planned for inclusion in the summer 2012 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin, scheduled to be published in August 2012:

■ Sole proprietorships, Tax Year 2010;
■ Foreign-controlled domestic corporations, Tax Year 2009;
■ Corporate foreign tax credit data, Tax Year 2008;
■ Fiduciary income tax returns, Tax Years 2002-2009; and
■ Partnership and sole proprietorship data by State, Tax Years 2008 and 2009.

Link: Historical Tables and Appendix

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Page Last Reviewed or Updated: 2012-08-04