Incomes Increased in 2006

The Internal Revenue Service issued the fall 2008 edition of its Statistics of Income Bulletin, showing growth in income for both individuals and businesses in 2006, but that was before the economic downturn had really hit.

Of the 138.4 million individual income tax returns filed for tax year 2006, adjusted gross income less deficit (losses) reported for 2006 totaled $8.0 trillion, an 8.2 percent increase from the previous year, while taxable income increased 8.6 percent to $5.6 trillion in 2006. Total income tax rose 9.5 percent to $1 trillion in 2006.

The number of returns that reported an alternative minimum tax liability decreased by 1 percent between 2005 and 2006, the first decline since tax year 2001. However, for the fourth straight year, the amount of alternative minimum tax reported showed a substantial increase, up $4.1 billion, or 23.8 percent, to $21.6 billion.

Approximately 22.1 million individual income tax returns reported non-farm sole proprietorship activity in tax year 2006. Profits for these sole proprietorships decreased by an inflation-adjusted 0.4 percent between 2005 and 2006 after increasing 5.5 percent between 2004 and 2005.

The number of partnerships increased 6.6 percent, from more than 2.7 million in tax year 2005 to more than 2.9 million in tax year 2006. Total partnership net income increased by 22.1 percent between the two years, from $546.2 billion to $666.7 billion.

Nonprofit charitable organizations exempt from income tax filed more than 286,000 information returns for tax year 2005, an increase of 4 percent from tax year 2004.  These organizations held more than $2.2 trillion in assets, an increase of 9 percent from the previous tax year. (Information returns for tax year 2005 were filed with the IRS in calendar years 2006 and 2007.) 

In 2004, an estimated 2.7 million adults with gross assets of $1.5 million or more owned nearly $11.1 trillion in assets. With a combined net worth of more than $10.2 trillion, where net worth is defined as gross asset value less debts and mortgages, these top wealth holders made up only about 1.2 percent of the total U.S. adult population, although they held 20.3 percent of the total U.S. net worth in 2004.