What % of AGI Is Your Federal Tax?

[haha]

The candidates are being asked this, how about us?

If you don't yet have enough of your 2011 data to know, use 2010.

I pay 15% of AGI, almost to the penny. And I have relatively small SS, and no pension, though I am required to withdraw RMDs.

I wish I could see come of the returns where people describe paying almost no federal income tax. I need to learn some of that sht!

Ha

[Alan]

Last year and this it is right around 15%.

Mostly pension income.

[nun]

Because I defer income into 457, 403b and 402 plans I end up paying a total of 16% tax on my AGI. In ER it will go down to 10%

[Brdofpray]

This year I am at 15% as well.

[FIREd]

We paid 25.7% of AGI in Federal Income Tax for 2010. Should be around 20% for 2011 (first full year of retirement for me = lower income).

[Lakedog]

In 2010, paid 17.6% of AGI. For 2011, should be just under 15%.

[LOL!]

In 2010, our Federal income tax was 12.2% of AGI. Our income was actually about 33% higher than our AGI and all without any tax-exempt muni bonds.

In 2009, our Federal income tax about 9% of AGI.

We had more income than the couple in this thread which describes how to pay low taxes: Bogleheads • View topic - Taxes on a family with $200,000 gross income

I will hazard a guess that folks with lowish income taxes have the following characteristics:
(a) married with children
(b) tax credits (foreign tax credit, education credit, child credit)
(c) itemized with charitable contributions, high medical bills
(d) possibly lowish income
(e) possibly qualified dividends and LT cap gains (taxed at 15% or less)

[Shawn]

Haven't calculated it yet for this year, but it was 19.41% a year ago.

Add in state, social security, medicare, state disability, property, sales, and misc, and the total effective rate comes to 34.57%. Total marginal rate is 43.5%.

I'm single and still working. No children. Sources of income include salary (primary), bonus, interest and (qualified) dividends, royalties, and a deduction for harvested capital losses. Muni interest is not included. I itemize (mortgage, state and local taxes, charity) and have a modest credit for foreign taxes. And then there's the AMT.

[haha]

So it seems that most pay >= 15%. I had an erroneous idea from casually reading some posts in the past.

Ha

[Hamlet]

I think a lot of the posts are talking about total income, not AGI. My tax rate on total income is lower than the rate on our AGI, since we defer 33k in income. That lowers AGI and increases our tax rate on AGI.

Quote:

Originally Posted by haha So it seems that most pay >= 15%. I had an erroneous idea from casually reading some posts in the past. Ha

[LOL!]

I definitely wrote about AGI. We pay a much lower rate on total income.

And I kept it to Federal income tax -- no FICA, no medicare, no state, no local, no school, no property, and no cosmetic surgery taxes.

[ejman]

2% 2010 tax return. Haven't done taxes for this year yet

[W2R]

14% for me. ... Edited: After checking my Turbotax printout files, I found out I was wrong. So much for my memory. Anyway, my 2010 federal income tax was 7.5% of my AGI. I had a foreign tax credit and qualified dividends. The standard deduction and exemption helped, and my AGI would be considered low (though it seems fine to me).

I'm still amazed at how much less I must pay in taxes, now that I am retired. For example, in 2008 when I was working fulltime, my federal income tax was 16.9% of my AGI.

[obgyn65]

Sorry Ha I have no idea what my AGI is. But I know I do pay more than 15% of taxes on my total income !

[devans0]

17.9% for 2010. This year will be quite a bit greater.

[DangerMouse]

Our Federal was 22.7% for 2010 and State was 7.5%.

[justplainbll]

Five year (2006 - 2010) mean = 21% of AGI for Federal and 4% for State.

[donheff]

15.94% of AGI. My pension is almost fully taxable. That will go up when I have to take RMDs instead of pulling from taxable.

[tapper]

I haven't done this years taxes but my spreadsheet tells me it will be about 13%.

In 2010 it was -3.5% which was fascinating since I had never actually made a profit from the federal government before. It helped that the DW was unemployed most of the year and since she owned her own business she was not eligible for unemployment compensation. We also replaced our furnace which provided a credit that exceeded our payable taxes. In the end we got $800 for the Making Work Pay credit and another $1000 for the Child Tax credit.

Looking back it appears that the lowest (other than the -3.5%) was 2.7% when I was working a summer job to pay for my college and the peak was 20.7% in 2000.

[ziggy29]

Was about 13% in 2010, should be about the same in 2011 when all is said and done. This is filing as MFJ, no kids, taking the standard deduction and in the 25% marginal tax bracket.