The number of high-earning U.S. taxpayers who did not owe income tax in 2008 shot up by nearly 80% from the previous year, according to the spring 2011 edition of the Statistics of Income (SOI) Bulletin, released June 14 by the IRS.
The latest edition of the bulletin shows that taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) of $200,000 or more filed nearly 4.4 million returns in 2008, 3.1% of total returns filed. Of those, 18,783 filers (0.4% of the high-income total) avoided paying U.S. income taxes by using legal deductions, credits and exemptions, compared with 10,465 (0.2%) who owed no tax in 2007.
A further 10,824 owed no worldwide income tax in 2008, up from 4,841 a year earlier.