Friday, March 07, 2008

How the rich get that way

Following up on the JLM's report below on the Fortunate 400, here's Tom's Herman's Tax Report on the same subject. Noteworthy bits:

• The top 400 had an AGI of $85.6 billion.
• Wages and salaries were just 8.6% of this total.
• As a group they gave $7.56 billion to charity
• 6.89% of AGI was from dividends, 6.7% from taxable interest. Tax-free interest is not reported.
• The big number is net capital gains of nearly $50 billion, representing 58% of AGI.

The report is based upon 2005 data, a pretty good year for stocks.

No comments: