by Catherine Mulbrandon
in Other
The following two graphs look at the capital gains of high income earners but they need a little explanation. Capital gains are a volatile component of personnel income. For example, depending on what is happening in the stock market capital gains can make up a relatively large or small part of the total income. Also capital gain tend to be realized in a lumpy way. Every year there are families who have a one-time jump in income due to the sale of a house, a business or some other assets like stocks. In these cases the income for those families might qualify them for the Top 1%, Top 0.1%, or Top 0.01% but only for a single year.
When you are choosing which families are members of the high-income “super rich” you have to make a decision whether to include capital gains when you rank the families by personnel income before calculating the share of income that is capital gains. The blue graph excludes capital gains when determining the top 0.01%, the purple graph includes capital gains when determining the top 0.01%
{Click on the graph to take a closer look} 
The income data can be found on Emmanuel Saez’s web site.
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality, Capital Gains, super rich[/tags]
by Catherine Mulbrandon
in Other
The New York Times had an income graph in a Mar 29th article that reminded me of the Income/GDP post I made last October. The difference is that I was looking at the share of GDP going to the top 10% as compared to the bottom 90% rather than the share of individual income going to the top 1% and bottom 90%. However, both graphs rely on the IRS data collected by Saez and Piketty. One critique I had about their graphic: by using a different scale for the second graph (the average income for the early 2001-05) it was difficult to compare it to the larger graph. This means the relationship between the two graphs was not very clear.
[tags]income distribution, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality[/tags]
While the graph in my previous post compared the Top 0.1 percent in different countries, here I made a direct comparison between the US Top Marginal Tax Rate and the Top 0.1 percent income share since 1913. This time just focusing on the United States.
{Click on the graph to take a closer look}
Again the effect by the two World Wars is there but what I wanted to emphasize is the relationship between the share of income going to the very wealthy and the change in the top marginal income tax rate.
The income data can be found on Emmanuel Saez’s web site. I found the marginal tax rate for the United States in the SOI Bulletin Historical Table A at the IRS site via truthandpolitics.org
[tags]income distribution, marginal tax rate, US income distribution, US income inequality, income inequality[/tags]
I created these graphs to show the change in the share of income going to the top 0.1%, comparing the United States to Canada, United Kingdom, France, and Japan from 1913-2004.
{Click on the graph to take a closer look}
The effect by the two World Wars is clear but what is more subtle is the effect on the share of income going to the very wealthy due to the change in the top income tax rate. This could be due to attempts by the very wealthy to hide their income from the IRS or else having a higher tax rate will impact the distribution of income or both. I didn’t have the marginal rates for the other countries but it would be interesting to see if they have a similar relationship between the share of total income captured by the Top 0.1 percent and income tax rates.
The income data can be found here on Emmanuel Saez’s web site. I found the marginal tax rate for the United States in the SOI Bulletin Historical Table A at the IRS site via truthandpolitics.org
[tags]income distribution, marginal tax rate[/tags]
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