Here's an interesting little tool from Kiplinger's. It allows you to plug in your income and then spits out where your income ranks compared to that of other Americans. In addition, it reports what percent of the tax burden your group bears. As an example, here's what it says for someone earning $75,000 a year:
Your income puts you in the top 25% of earners. Together, you and the other 32.6 million taxpayers with incomes of $60,041 or more paid a total of $705.9 billion in federal income taxes.
The top earning 25% of taxpayers reported 66.1% of all AGI and paid 84.9% of total income taxes.
Quite an incentive to earn more huh? Make more so the government can take more. ;-)
It's not particularly helpful (it won't really change what you're doing/need to do), but it is interesting and fun to try. And, of course, income isn't the real measure of financial wealth -- net worth is. Remember, it's not what you make, but what you spend that matters most.
But if you do want to improve your income, see the Free Money Finance Guide to Making More Money.
We are in the same category :-)
Posted by: Robert | November 09, 2006 at 03:15 PM
You should rename your blog to "Top 25% earners blog" :D
Posted by: Tadas Talaikis | November 09, 2006 at 03:19 PM
Ha!
Just for the record, I said "here's what it says for someone earning $75,000 a year" NOT "I earn $75,000 a year and here's what it says."
In other words, I picked an income that was NOT mine to use as an example. I'm tricky that way. ;-)
Posted by: FMF | November 09, 2006 at 03:42 PM
One key point: you should enter your AGI, not your gross income/salary. Devotees of the FMF mindset will have a signfiicantly lower AGI than income due to 401K, flex health account, and other practices that reduce their tax exposure and lower their reported AGI.
Posted by: MrAtoZ | November 09, 2006 at 05:00 PM