Spring 2009 Statistics of Income Bulletin

The IRS announced the availability of the spring 2009 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin, which features information on high-income individual income tax returns filed for tax year 2006.

For tax year 2006, taxpayers filed nearly 4.1 million returns with adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more, up from 3.6 million returns in the prior year. These high-income returns represent almost 3.0 percent of all returns filed for 2006.

The Statistics of Income (SOI) Division produces the SOI Bulletin on a quarterly basis. Articles included in the publication provide the most recent data available from various tax and information returns filed by U.S. taxpayers. This issue of the SOI Bulletin also includes articles on the following subjects:

Foreign Earned Income Exclusion: In tax year 2006, about 335,000 U.S. taxpayers living abroad reported approximately $36.7 billion in foreign-earned income and claimed nearly $18.4 billion in exclusions from income.

Possessions Tax Credit: For tax year 2005, 102 U.S. corporations claimed the possessions tax credit for income derived from business operations in U.S. possessions. The total credit claimed was just less than $1 billion. Most corporations that claimed a possessions tax credit did so for operations in Puerto Rico, and those corporations claimed more than 98 percent of the total credit amount.

Qualified Zone Academy Credit: Financial institutions claimed total tax credits of $135 million under the Qualified Zone Academy Bond program in tax year 2005, up from $117 million in 2004.

Filings of Individual Income Tax Returns: Taxpayers filed 143.0 million individual income tax returns for tax year 2007, an increase of 3.3 percent from the 138.4 million returns filed for 2006. Adjusted gross income increased 6.9 percent from 2006 to $8.5 trillion for 2007, and taxable income rose 6.8 percent to $5.9 trillion. The alternative minimum tax increased 8.6 percent to $20.9 billion, while total income tax rose 6.5 percent to $1.1 trillion.

The Statistics of Income Bulletin is available at IRS.gov. Copies of the Statistics of Income Bulletin are available from the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954. The annual subscription rate is $53 ($74.20 foreign), single issues cost $39 ($48.75 foreign).

For more information about these data, write to the Director, Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, RAS:S, Internal Revenue Service, P.O. Box 2608, Washington, DC 20013-2608.