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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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I keep hearing about the 1% but no one has ever said exactly how much money you have to have to qualify.

I have, several times. Apparently, I'm the only one who can get Google. I wonder how they stay in business?



The income thresholds are for the amount of AGI on a return, not per taxpayer.

That means a single filer who made $343,927 or more in 2009 is in the top 1 percentile. A married couple with two kids and combined earnings of $343,927 or more also was among the top earners in the country. The 2009 figures are the latest the IRS has tallied. Filing of returns for tax year 2010 didn't officially close until Oct. 17.

The 1.4 million Americans in the IRS' top taxpayer category in 2009 reported nearly 17 percent of all the country's taxable income. From those filers, the IRS collected $318 billion or almost 37 percent of all the individual taxes paid in 2009.

Where the top isn't that much: For most Americans, making more than $340,000 a year does feel rich. But for residents of high-cost areas, such as much of California, New York or major urban areas, that amount, especially for dual-income families, is not that unusual.

In New York City, where the Occupy Wall Street movement began, the richest 1 percent of households saw their share of all income in the city rise from 12 percent in 1980 to 44 percent in 2007, the last year for which data are available, according to a study by the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Part of the reason for the disparity is that the Big Apple is home to a lot of executives, doctors, lawyers, managers and supervisors who work outside of finance.

Those professions are among the most represented occupations of taxpayers in the top 1 percent of earners between 1979 and 2005, according to a November 2010 academic study of "Jobs and Income Growth of Top Earners and the Causes of Changing Income Inequality."

Other studies, higher incomes: Some other tax calculations require higher incomes before a person can be classified as part of the top 1 percent of earners.

The Tax Policy Center in Washington, D.C., a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, runs an economic simulation model that shows the top 1 percent of earners in 2009 made $503,086. TPC projects $516,633 as the cutoff for the top earners in 2010 and $532,613 for 2011.

Roberton Williams, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, says his group's income figures are larger because it "takes a much broader, more comprehensive look at income. We look at income regardless of the source, not just adjusted gross income."

Across-the-board recession: But one trend upon which most income analysts agree is every income level has been affected by the recession.

U.S. Census data show that from 2000 to 2010, median income in the U.S. declined 7 percent. And the outlook for recouping lost earnings isn't good, according to a recent Wall Street Journal survey of economists. The economists told the newspaper they expect inflation-adjusted incomes to rise only 5 percent over the next decade.

"The State of Working America's Wealth," a study by the Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, produced similar bleak income results, especially for lower-income earners.

The Washington, D.C.-based think tank found that from 2007 to 2009, average annualized household wealth declined by 16 percent for the richest fifth of Americans and 25 percent for the rest of the country.

But even with the across-the-board income drops, EPI researchers found that in 2009 the wealthiest 1 percent of U.S. households had net worth that was 225 times greater than the typical median household's net worth.

That disparity, according to EPI, is the highest ratio on record.

And that information might just prompt the Occupy Wall Street participants to add 225 to their 1 percent numerical complaint list.



http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/top-1-percent-earn.aspx
(the figures were complied in July 2011, the latest the IRS has on record)

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

"The Family," the conservative group behind the conservative revolution, has their own version of Christianity (for real--I'm not being the least bit sarcastic here, nor I'm I exaggerating or mischaracterizing in the slightest), which includes Jesus' support for the wealthy and world under Christian theocracies.

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

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ORIGINAL: thishereboi

Just out of curiousity. Do you consider John Kerry part of the 1%? How about Jay Rockefeller or Mark Warner? Jared Polis? Frank Lautenberg? Are they part of the 1% because I am pretty sure they have a D after their name. Or maybe Dianne Feinstein or Richard Blumenthal? Do they count?

And what about the actors and actresses? Would Rosie fall into that 1%? Pretty sure she is sitting on a pile of money and I doubt she is on the repub side. What about Barbra Streisand? She was going to leave the country if Bush was elected, does she count as one of the 1%?

Just curious. I keep hearing about the 1% but no one has ever said exactly how much money you have to have to qualify.

Yes I do, boi. I also consider Bill Gates, Opry Windbag, Steve Wozniac and several others. You do have to admit, though that a vast majority of the wealth, especially the so-called old money, is sequestered with families that vote hardcore R.

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ORIGINAL: Arturas

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

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ORIGINAL: thishereboi

Just out of curiousity. Do you consider John Kerry part of the 1%? How about Jay Rockefeller or Mark Warner? Jared Polis? Frank Lautenberg? Are they part of the 1% because I am pretty sure they have a D after their name. Or maybe Dianne Feinstein or Richard Blumenthal? Do they count?

And what about the actors and actresses? Would Rosie fall into that 1%? Pretty sure she is sitting on a pile of money and I doubt she is on the repub side. What about Barbra Streisand? She was going to leave the country if Bush was elected, does she count as one of the 1%?

Just curious. I keep hearing about the 1% but no one has ever said exactly how much money you have to have to qualify.

Yes I do, boi. I also consider Bill Gates, Opry Windbag, Steve Wozniac and several others. You do have to admit, though that a vast majority of the wealth, especially the so-called old money, is sequestered with families that vote hardcore R.

It's apparent you are out of ideas for an OP. May I suggest just kinda, oh I know, go fishing and then come back and try.

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the top 1/2 of 1% make them look like the bottom 99% by comparison, we're not talking Hundreds of Thousands, or even Millions, we're talking Billions.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

The Wall St. Journal reports 3.1 million millionaires--there's your top, though they are measuring not income here, but investible assets:
According to the annual World Wealth Report from Merill Lynch and Capgemini, the U.S. had 3.1 million millionaires in 2010, up from 2.86 million in 2009. The latest figure tops the pre-crisis peak of three million.

Merrill and Capgemini define millionaires as individuals with $1 million or more in investible assets, not including primary home, collectibles, consumables and consumer durables.

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ORIGINAL: xssve

Forget about the top 1%, they may make a lot of money but they mostly work - the top 1/2 of 1% make them look like the bottom 99% by comparison, we're not talking Hundreds of Thousands, or even Millions, we're talking Billions.

And yes, they give a lot of money to the republicans, I linked to it not too long ago, and linked to some IRS data that illustrated the income divisions among the top 1% just the other day.