More income statistics

JLM beat me to the punch in reporting data from the Winter 2006-2007 Statistics of Income Bulletin published by IRS. Note that despite the fact that Congress keeps patching the AMT to "hold taxpayers harmless" the AMT revenue skyrocketed 66% in just two years. That's partly because even with the patches more taxpayers are being trapped, and those who've long been enshared are finding their AMT liability rising at shocking rates.

Funny, I didn't hear anything about the "Bush tax increases."

More data that I'd like to understand better:

• In 2005, adjusted gross national income rose a whopping 8.9% over 2004, but net taxable income rose 9.5%. Apparently the deductions just aren't keeping up, or the tax planners are getting lazy. The end result was that total income tax collections rose 11.8%, far outstripping GDP growth that year.

• Net capital gains rose by 36.7% in 2005. No one forecast that result. No one would dare to forecast it.

• 124,292 split-interest charitable trusts filed trust information returns in 2005. Charitable lead trusts are growing in popularity, but charitable remainder unitrusts continue to be the most common charitable trust type. As a group charitable trusts did really well in 2004, as total net capital gains reported by CRTs increased by 119.2%, and total net income increased 67.4% from 2004 to 2005.

A ten-year archive of Statistics of Income, including the Winter 2007 issue, is available from IRS here.