How Top-Heavy American Income Really Is (2022)
The $200k-and-up bracket is a small share of filers but most of the income tax. The concentration of income and the tax on it.
Key findings
- The top bracket matters far more than its size. Returns reporting $200,000 or more of income were just 7.9% of all filers in Tax Year 2022, but earned 44.2% of all adjusted gross income and paid 66.7% of all federal income tax.
- At the other end, the roughly 50.8% of filers earning under $50,000 paid just 3.2% of federal income tax between them.
- Income tax is even more concentrated than income itself: the top bracket's share of tax (66.7%) runs well above its share of AGI (44.2%), the arithmetic of a progressive system.
- This is the full population of returns, so the shares describe every filer, not a sample.
How concentrated is American income, and how concentrated is the tax on it? This takes the Tax Year 2022 IRS ZIP data, grouped into the six income brackets the IRS publishes, and compares each bracket's share of filers, of total adjusted gross income, and of total federal income tax. The picture is top-heavy on income and even more top-heavy on tax. These are exact tabulations of tax returns, not estimates.
The $200k-and-up bracket
Share of filers, income, and tax by bracket
| Category | Share of returns | Share of AGI | Share of income tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $25k | 27.5% | 3.7% | 0.3% |
| $25k to $50k | 23.3% | 9.1% | 2.9% |
| $50k to $75k | 15% | 9.8% | 4.9% |
| $75k to $100k | 9.7% | 9% | 5.6% |
| $100k to $200k | 16.6% | 24.3% | 19.5% |
| $200k and up | 7.9% | 44.2% | 66.7% |
By income bracket
| AGI bracket | Share of returns | Share of AGI | Share of income tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under $25k | 27.5% | 3.7% | 0.3% |
| $25k to $50k | 23.3% | 9.1% | 2.9% |
| $50k to $75k | 15.0% | 9.8% | 4.9% |
| $75k to $100k | 9.7% | 9.0% | 5.6% |
| $100k to $200k | 16.6% | 24.3% | 19.5% |
| $200k and up | 7.9% | 44.2% | 66.7% |
Shares are of national totals summed from IRS state totals. Income tax is total tax liability (A06500). 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.