Median U.S. Gross Income: $61,500
TaxProf Blog has the latest US Median Income, along with a couple of nifty charts on median income growth (in both nominal and real terms) and the average income tax rate for the last 90 years.
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4 comments:
The $61,500 figure is spurious. It refers to guidelines for "median gross income figures that are to be used by issuers of qualified mortgage bonds, as defined in § 143(a) of the Internal Revenue Code, and issuers of mortgage credit certificates, as defined in § 25(c), in computing the
housing cost/income ratio described in § 143(f)(5)."
The most recent figures from the Census Bureau (press release dated August 26, 2008) show median U.S. household income at $50,233. TaxProf Blog either has trouble with reading comprehension or for some reason is deliberately trying to mislead its readers.
Oh, and those charts show *average* income growth, not median. Huge difference there that anyone who purports to know about income and tax policy really should be aware of. Once again, makes me wonder what the author's agenda might be to offer not only misleading stats, but to mislabel them to boot.
$61,500 is the median, not the average (though that is what the charts show) computed by the IRS from tax returns. That is different than what the Census reports based on surveys of individuals (i.e. self-reported income). That is why there is a difference.
I think the Census Bureau is more trustworthy, because the IRS probably doesn't count households that don't pay income taxes.
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