<p>Uh, no. Anyone who works (should) file a tax return - if only to recover their withholding. My kids do. Those count as filed tax returns.</p>
<p>“Should file a return [for the withholding]” and “don’t file returns [because they are not legally required to]” are very different things.</p>
<p>Well, OK. The 50th percentile of returns filed in 2001 was below $30,000. Given the common assertion that the average household income is about $50,000 it’s pretty clear that there’s alot of tax returns being filed by only partially employed people, including students, retirees, etc. And those returns are included in the 100% of returns of which the top 5% pay 50% of the tax (out of the 35% of the total <strong>taxable</strong> income they receive)</p>
<p>And by the way - the figures I’m looking at say it’s the top 5%, not 2%, which pay those taxes. Go to the IRS spreadsheet that’s linked to at the bottom of the rushlimbaugh.com website and check it out.</p>
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<p>Agreed. Students, retirees, partially employed people (stay-at-home moms who work from 9-2), you name it. Unless I’m reading the numbers worng, doesn’t that also mean, quite simply, that there are a lot of married people? $30k/year each for husband and wife is one household but, for many people who don’t file jointly, two different returns. Right? Or is there a different designation for that?</p>
<p>I think it’s just the number of “returns”. Generally married people file jointly because it usually saves taxes. But you’re right, they don’t have to. The statistic just means that out of all personal income tax returns filed, the midpoint return showed a taxable income of under $30,000. Half of the returns showed less income than that, half more.</p>
<p>Average and Median are not the same thing. Add in Bill Gates’ income in and the average goes up but not the median.</p>