The IRS has released a new Statistics of Income Bulletin with the first numbers on the tax season.
, I noted that the percentage of people who filed returns that indicated that they paid no federal income tax had dropped slightly, to 32.4%. A revised figure brings that back up to 32.6% which is typical for recent years. But for tax year , the percentage has jumped to 36.3%:
| Tax Year | Number of Zero-Tax Filers | Zero-Tax Filers as a Percent of All Filers |
|---|---|---|
| 42,500,000 | 32.6% | |
| 43,800,000 | 32.6% | |
| 45,700,000 | 33.0% | |
| 46,600,000 | 32.6% | |
| 51,600,000 | 36.3% |
(These numbers only represent tax filers who owed no federal income tax for the years in question; it does not include other taxes. In tax year , some people who ordinarily would not have filed a tax return — for instance because they didn’t have any income to report — filed anyway in order to claim their stimulus payment. Those people aren’t included in the totals above.)
this percentage hovered in the 18–25% range. Then it climbed to this 32–33% plateau during the Dubya years. This new 36.3% figure represents a jump, but there is an even bigger jump expected from people filing this year.
