The articles that I've seen indicate that it
by irishlaw2010 (2024-02-19 11:25:54)

In reply to: True  posted by ufl

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resembles a bell curve.

The younger and the older are more likely to not have federal income tax liabilities. This is a Forbes summary (which I know is not the best source) of an article from the National Tax Journal in 2019 and showed roughly 90% of people ages 25-55 pay income tax. Obviously, that data may have shifted with changing patterns of work during the Pandemic and the overall aging of the US adult population.

From the Article:
Age and non-payers
Now, Don Fullerton of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Nirupama Rao of the University of Michigan have taken a deeper dive into the 47 percent (now 44 percent according to TPC estimates) Their findings, published in the June edition of the National Tax Journal here and summarized in TaxNotes here (paywall) are fascinating:


-The likelihood of not paying federal income tax is closely correlated to age: If you are very young or (especially) very old, you are far less likely to pay income tax than if you are working age. Only 11 percent of those age 25-55 do not pay federal income tax while more than 80 percent of those age 75 or older are non-payers.

-Relatively few people are persistent non-payers. Among those of prime working age who do not pay federal income tax in any given year, nearly one-third will do so for only one year. Almost 6 in 10 will be paying income tax within three years, and just one-in-eight are non-payers for a decade or more.

-By the way, Fullerton and Rao found a similar story when it comes to government benefits. If you include Social Security, older adults are far more likely to receive government transfer payments than younger people. And, of course, once they begin receiving Social Security, they will continue to do so for their lifetimes.

-But if you exclude their benefits and look only at working age people, the pattern looks a lot like it does for taxes. Among those who receive some government support in one year, 60 percent will get a transfer in the following year. But five years later, only about one-in-five still will be getting benefits. And after 10 years, only about 12 percent still get benefits.







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