How to Read IRS SOI High-Income Tax Returns — $200,000 Returns, Nontaxable Cases and Effective Rates

As of 8 November 2026, 00:30 KST (retrieved by this page at that time); latest edition: the TY 2022 article in the Spring 2026 bulletin, High-Income Tax Returns for Tax Year 2022 by Justin Bryan, in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Statistics of Income (SOI) Bulletin, with tables sourced to April 2026. It counts returns with income of $200,000 or more and those among them with no U.S. or no worldwide income tax, for TY 2022 with summary data back to TY 1977. Primary source: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/soi-a-inhi-id2601.pdf^[1][2]

Comparison basis: return counts are IRS estimates from a sample of returns, printed to the single return; the fourth column gives the percent changes IRS states in the text, and the fifth column gives this page's own calculations from the printed counts, rounded to one decimal. For AGI returns with no U.S. income tax, this page's calculation gives 28.8% against IRS's stated 28.9%, as printed; the reason for the difference is not established. The $200,000 line is nominal in every year except the inflation-adjusted rows.^[1]

In three lines

1. IRS SOI publishes each year how many returns report income of $200,000 or more and how many of those owe no income tax, as required by the Tax Reform Act of 1976.
2. For TY 2022, 12,497,064 returns had AGI of $200,000 or more, and 9,997 of them had no worldwide income tax, up 12.7% from TY 2021.
3. Above an inflation-adjusted threshold of $1,028,664, AGI returns fell to 770,735 from 941,749 while the inflation-adjusted threshold increased.^[1]

Legal basis. IRS's footnote 1 reads: "The Tax Reform Act of 1976 requires annual publication of data on individual income tax returns reporting incomes of $200,000 or more, including the number of such returns reporting no income tax liability and the importance of various tax provisions in making these returns nontaxable."^[1]

Two income concepts. AGI is the statutory measure. "The expanded income concept includes items that were reported on the tax return to obtain a more comprehensive measure of income than AGI." Expanded income adds items such as tax-exempt interest, nontaxable Social Security benefits and the foreign-earned income exclusion, and subtracts some deductions (Appendix A). "AGI and expanded income differed for 36.7 million (22.8%) of the 161.1 million individual income tax returns filed for TY 2022 (Figure A)." The average difference was $11,662 and the median $8,211. In the Tables 1 and 2 cross-classification, 12,425,350 returns were at $200,000 or more on both measures.^[1]

Two tax concepts. U.S. income tax is total federal income tax liability, including the alternative minimum tax, less all credits, and excludes payroll and self-employment taxes. "The worldwide income tax concept addresses this circumstance by adding back the allowable foreign tax credit and foreign taxes paid on excluded foreign-earned income to U.S. income tax." "The sum of these two items is believed to be a reasonable proxy for foreign taxes paid." A return counts as taxable only with a positive liability after all credits, including refundable credits.^[1]

Estimates and symbols. The tables state that all figures are estimates based on samples, and money amounts in Tables 5 and 6 are in thousands of dollars. An asterisk marks a cell IRS describes this way: "Estimate should be used with caution because of the small number of sample returns on which it is based." A double asterisk means: "Data combined to avoid disclosure of information for specific taxpayers." Bracketed notes mark shares of less than 0.05%, and N/A means not applicable; these are not zeros, and this page makes no all-years comparison across cells combined for disclosure.^[1]

Unaudited data. "The fact that the data have been drawn from unaudited returns is of even greater importance for those high-income returns that are nontaxable." "Almost any audit changes would make such returns taxable."^[1]

Nominal vs inflation-adjusted threshold. The nominal count of AGI returns at $200,000 or more rose 8.3%, while the count above the inflation-adjusted threshold ($1,028,664 for TY 2022, against $952,443 for TY 2021) fell from 941,749 (0.586% of all returns) to 770,735 (0.478%), a change of -18.2% (this page's calculation). "Since 1977, the number of returns with AGI above this inflation-adjusted threshold has increased at an average rate of approximately 7.6%."^[1]

A year label as printed. "Measured using expanded income, of the roughly 773,000 returns above the inflation-adjusted threshold, 635 returns had no U.S. income tax liability, down 10.6% from TY 2021, and 104 returns showed no worldwide income tax liability for TY 2021, down 39.2% over the previous year." The 104 returns are the TY 2022 figure in Figure D (lower panel), and the 39.2% decline matches 104 against 171 for TY 2021 (this page's calculation), so the sentence's "for TY 2021" reads as TY 2022, as printed by IRS.^[1]

A footnote pointer as printed. The inflation note under Figures C, D and E reads: "Inflation-adjusted dollars were calculated using the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index for urban consumers with 1976 as the base year." It adds: "See footnote 7 of this article for further details." The article's CPI footnote is numbered 9: "Inflation-adjusted dollars are based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) as published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics." Footnote 7 is about the worldwide tax concept: "The inclusion of foreign taxes paid on excluded foreign earned income, beginning with TY 1990, represents an improvement in the worldwide income tax concept."^[1]

No U.S. tax vs no worldwide tax. For TY 2022, 28,691 returns with AGI of $200,000 or more had no U.S. income tax, but only 9,997 had no worldwide income tax, because foreign taxes are added back. "It was the fourth increase in a row but still below the peak of 12,326 returns for TY 2008."^[1]

Taxable vs nontaxable profiles. Under the expanded-income concept, returns without worldwide tax were more likely than taxable returns to have tax-exempt interest (40.6% vs 20.1%, averaging $159,380 vs $16,659), medical and dental deductions (37.0% vs 2.5%) and nontaxable Social Security benefits (38.1% vs 20.0%). "Nontaxable returns (55.7%) were much less likely than high-income taxable returns (85.9%) to have income from salaries and wages." These are shares of returns, not causes.^[1]

AGI concept. "The most important item in eliminating tax on the 9,997 returns without any worldwide income tax and with AGI of $200,000 or more was total miscellaneous deductions." That was the case for 30.6% (3,058) of these returns, followed by all other tax credits (20.5%, 2,053), the medical and dental expense deduction (13.1%, 1,305) and charitable contributions (12.4%, 1,243). The taxes paid deduction, limited to $10,000 from TY 2018, was the leading primary item on only 0.1% but the most frequent secondary item (22.6%, 2,264).^[1]

Expanded-income concept. Among the 11,587 returns without worldwide tax, the medical and dental expense deduction was the leading item on 20.1%, followed by all other tax credits (17.9%, 2,073), tax-exempt interest (17.8%, 2,064) and the foreign-earned income exclusion (15.3%, 1,770); capital gains taxed at 0 percent was the most frequent secondary item (17.4%, 2,019).^[1]

Effective rates. Among returns with expanded income of $200,000 or more, 3.1% had positive worldwide tax under 10% of expanded income, 17.3% had effective rates between 20 and 25%, and 10.9% had 25% or more. In all, 71.9% had adjusted taxable income of 80% or more of expanded income and 98.2% of 50% or more.^[1]

Tax-law changes for TY 2022. Many American Rescue Plan Act changes for TY 2021 were not extended. On the child tax credit the article states: "Depending on modified AGI, a taxpayer received a credit amount of up to $2,000 for a qualifying child, down from the TY 2021 maximum amounts of $3,600 for children under 5 and $3,000 for those older." IRS's 2021 Child Tax Credit guidance gives the TY 2021 amounts as $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for children aged 6–17: "The credit increased from $2,000 per child in 2020 to $3,600 in 2021 for each child under age 6." "Similarly, for each child age 6 to 16, it’s increased from $2,000 to $3,000." "It also provides the $3,000 credit for 17-year-olds." The article's "under 5" wording differs from that guidance, as printed. For the child and dependent care credit, the limit on qualifying expenses used to calculate the credit fell to $3,000 for one qualifying person (from $8,000) and to $6,000 for two or more (from $16,000), and the credit became nonrefundable. The article does not separate the effect of these changes on its counts.^[1][3]

Publication. "The Statistics of Income Bulletin is issued quarterly by the Statistics of Income Division of the Internal Revenue Service." The Spring 2026 bulletin page lists this article and shows Page Last Reviewed or Updated: 29-May-2026. The article covers TY 2022, the latest year in it; the date of the TY 2023 article is not established by these sources, and the cited pages show no revision of these TY 2022 estimates.^[2]