What Each Income Group Actually Pays (2022)
The effective federal income tax rate, income group by income group, straight from IRS records. It climbs from about 1% to 21%.
Key findings
- The federal income tax is steeply progressive in practice, not just on paper. The average effective rate (total income tax divided by AGI) climbed from 1.2% for filers under $25,000 to 21.2% for the $200k-and-up bracket.
- In dollars, the average return under $25,000 owed about $145 in federal income tax; the average return in the top bracket owed about $112,359.
- The jump is not smooth. The effective rate roughly doubles between the $100k-to-$200k bracket and the $200k-and-up bracket, where the highest statutory rates and the bulk of capital income land.
- Across all filers, the overall effective federal income tax rate was 14.0% of AGI.
What share of their income does each group actually hand to the federal government? This takes the Tax Year 2022 IRS ZIP data and computes the average effective federal income tax rate, total tax liability divided by adjusted gross income, for each income bracket, along with the average tax paid per return. The effective rate is well below the top statutory bracket for everyone, because it averages over all income taxed at lower rates, but it rises sharply with income. These are exact tabulations of tax returns.
Effective federal income tax rate, Tax Year 2022
Effective tax rate climbs with income
| Category | Average effective federal income tax rate |
|---|---|
| Under $25k | 1.2% |
| $25k to $50k | 4.5% |
| $50k to $75k | 7% |
| $75k to $100k | 8.7% |
| $100k to $200k | 11.3% |
| $200k and up | 21.2% |
By income bracket
| AGI bracket | Effective rate | Avg tax per return | Avg AGI per return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $25k | 1.2% | $145 | $12,556 |
| $25k to $50k | 4.5% | $1,658 | $36,840 |
| $50k to $75k | 7.0% | $4,329 | $61,546 |
| $75k to $100k | 8.7% | $7,580 | $86,712 |
| $100k to $200k | 11.3% | $15,611 | $138,287 |
| $200k and up | 21.2% | $112,359 | $529,886 |
Effective rate is total tax liability (A06500) divided by AGI (A00100). Averages are per return. Exact tabulation; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
IRS Statistics of Income (SOI): Migration and ZIP Code Data
- Vintage:
- Tax Year 2022
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
Tabulations built from individual income tax returns. The migration files count how many returns (roughly households), how many individuals, and how much adjusted gross income moved between every pair of U.S. counties and states from one year to the next. The ZIP Code file reports returns, income, and tax items by ZIP code and income bracket. It is a near-census of tax filers, enabling analysis of where people and their incomes move and how income is distributed geographically.
The IRS Statistics of Income division tabulates these files from individual income tax returns (Form 1040). Migration is inferred from the change in the mailing address between a filer’s return in one year and the next; the ZIP Code file aggregates return and income items by ZIP and by adjusted-gross-income bracket.
These are administrative tabulations covering essentially all tax returns filed, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts and totals; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect taxpayer privacy, the IRS suppresses or combines small cells (for example county flows below a threshold), and dollar amounts are reported in thousands. Aggregate rows for totals, non-migrants, and foreign flows appear alongside the detailed county and state records.
Migration records carry origin and destination state and county FIPS codes; the ZIP file carries state and ZIP code. Across the files, n1 approximates households (returns), n2 approximates population (individuals), and AGI is in thousands of dollars.
- Only tax filers are covered, so people who do not file (disproportionately the very low income and some elderly) are missing.
- Migration is based on year-to-year address changes on returns and misses moves that are not reflected in filing, as well as late or amended returns.
- Small county-to-county flows are suppressed for privacy, so detailed origin-destination pairs are incomplete at the low end.
- Dollar amounts are in thousands and reflect adjusted gross income as reported, not wealth or spending; the data lags roughly two years.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative tabulation (near-census of tax filers)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Internal Revenue Service, Statistics of Income, Tax Year 2022 (Migration Data / ZIP Code Data). Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-23.