Selected historical and other data

Statistics of Income Bulletin, Summer, 2004

[38] Represents tax withheld on (a) salaries and wages; (b) certain tip income; (c) pensions and annuities; (d) certain gambling winnings; and (e) distributions from profit-sharing plans, retirement plans, and Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRA's). Also included are taxes withheld as a result of "backup withholding" on certain interest, dividends, and royalty payments, which otherwise were not subject to withholding.

[39] Represents the sum of (a) "estimated tax," generally paid quarterly throughout the tax year by self-employed and certain other taxpayers with insufficient or no tax withheld, and (b) prior-year tax overpayments taxpayers elected to credit to their current-year's "estimated tax" in lieu of requesting a refund.

[40] Represents the sum of payments made with a request for an "automatic" 4-month extension of time in which to file an income tax return, and payments with a request for an additional 2-month extension. Notwithstanding the timing of these requests, full payment of a tax estimate for the year had to be made with the original application; if adjustments to the amount thus paid were later necessitated, the difference was either refundable or payable subject to an interest charge (which is not reflected in the tax statistics).

[41] Includes refunds (shown separately), plus credits to the following year's "estimated tax" and the refundable portion of the "earned income credit" (see footnote 37). The taxes reflected in tax overpayments are the same as those listed in footnote 38.

SOURCE: Except for dollar amounts associated with the Presidential election campaign checkoff, data are from Statistics of Income--Individual Income Tax Returns, appropriate years. Depending on the year, dollar amounts associated with the Presidential election campaign checkoff were accumulated by calendar year either from U.S. Treasury Department, Internal Revenue Service, "Table S-1 Collections, Comparative Summary, Document 7038," Report NO-Treas-103, monthly, or from unpublished monthly data from Chief Financial Officer, Office of Finance, Revenue Accounting Division, Office of Revenue Systems. See also "General notations and statements," preceding the footnotes section.

Table 2.--Not Presented.

Table 3

[1] In addition to low-income taxpayers, this size class (and others) includes taxpayers with "tax preferences," not reflected in "adjusted gross income" or "taxable income," which are subject to the "alternative minimum tax" (included in "total income tax"), defined in Table 1, footnote 35.

[2] A study for 1993 showed that about half of all returns with "adjusted gross income" under $5,000 were filed by dependents of other taxpayers.

[3] "Adjusted gross income" (AGI) minus "personal exemptions and total deductions" will not equal "taxable income" because the total of deductions and exemptions could exceed AGI and, therefore, includes amounts that could not be used in computing "taxable income."

[4] Not computed.

SOURCE: Statistics of Income--Individual Income Tax Returns, appropriate years. See also "General notations and statements," preceding the footnotes section.