While athletes, movie stars and other celebrities can earn very high incomes, the majority (61%) of very high-income people (> $1,246,000) work as corporate executives or in the finance industry.

When you account for all taxpayers with income greater than 1.2 million a year, the list includes: Lawyers; Medical jobs; Real estate jobs; Entrepreneurs; Business operations; Computer, math, engineering, technical jobs; Skilled sales; Professors and scientists; Farmers & ranchers

Data source: Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality: Evidence from U.S. Tax Return Data (pdf)

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Day 28 of 28 Days of Tax Data

From Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Tax return from 1913 (the first year of income tax was assessed in the United States)

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A look at the relationship between occupation and income. From a poster I created in 2004.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}

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In honor of the the Super Bowl, I am posting Sports Illustrated’s Fortunate 50 top-earning American athletes (earnings include salary, winnings, bonuses, and endorsements). However, only one of the players in today’s game made the list, Tom Brady of the New England Patriots, Rank: 47.

{Click on the image to take a closer look}

I found a nice table of this data on SportsColumn.com. Salaries are based on current or most recently completed seasons (exception: 2007 for NFL). For winnings-based sports (auto racing, golf, tennis), 2006 calendar year amounts used.

[tags]athletes, income, endorsements[/tags]

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From the AP via ABC News

President Bush reported adjusted gross income of $735,180 for last year, on which he paid $187,768 in federal taxes, according to the president’s return released Friday by the White House.

The White House also released the 2005 tax return filed by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne. According to the return, the Cheneys have overpaid their taxes this year and are entitled to a refund of about $1.9 million. Their adjusted gross income was about $8.82 million.

. . .

I compared the incomes reported in this story to the Excel file (Table A6: Column S, Column U) produced by Emmanual Saez and Thomas Piketty. At $735,180 the Bushes’ income would be in the Top 0.5% of all income in the United States. While the Cheneys’ income of $8,820,000 place them in the Top 0.01%

[tags]Bush’s income, Cheney’s income[/tags]

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