One definition of rich is getting into the top 1 percent. If that’s your goal, it’s becoming harder to reach.
The income needed to exit the bottom 99 percent of U.S. taxpayers hit $515,371 in 2017, according to Internal Revenue Service data released this week. That’s up 7.2 percent from a year earlier, even after adjusting for inflation.
Since 2011, when Occupy Wall Street protesters rallied under the slogan “We are the 99 percent,” the income threshold for the top 1 percent is up an inflation-adjusted 33 percent.
To join the top 0.1 percent, you would have needed to earn $2.4 million in 2017, an increase of 38 percent since 2011. The top 0.01 percent threshold has jumped 46 percent.
Meanwhile, the top 0.001 percent — an elite group of 1,433 taxpayers — earned at least $63.4 million each in 2017, up 51 percent since the Occupy protests.
The median taxpayer, at the 50th percentile, has seen income rise 20 percent since 2011.
Rising inequality is a top focus of the Democratic presidential campaign.
“We cannot afford to continue this level of income and wealth inequality,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said during Tuesday’s debate. “We cannot afford a billionaire class, whose greed and corruption has been at war with the working families of this country for 45 years.”
Though the rich in the U.S. are doing well, they also pay the greatest share of taxes. The top 1 percent earned 21 percent of the country’s income, and paid 38.5 percent of federal individual income taxes. The top 1 percent paid a greater share of income tax to the U.S. Treasury than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.9 percent).
Working-class taxpayers do pay many other taxes, including federal payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and state and local levies.
