John H. Fisher wrote:

- quote -

This is kind of interesting. As I recall, when Congress
enacted the Retirement Savings Credit a couple of years ago,
the enabling legislation asked the IRS to compile statistics
on IRAs, the use of the credit, etc. This SOI report
predates the credit by a year or so, but no doubt we will
see more such information in the future.

MTW

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IR-2004-102, July 30, 2004

IRS SPRING STATISTICS OF INCOME BULLETIN FEATURES IRAs, INDIVIDUAL TAX
RATES AND SHARES

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced the release of
the Spring 2004 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin, a quarterly
compilation of information on selected topics from tax returns and other
sources.

For the first time, the Bulletin takes a detailed look at individual
retirement arrangements.

At the end of 2000, 46.3 million taxpayers held IRA accounts worth a total
of $2.6 trillion in fair market value. The bulk — $2.4 trillion, or 91.5
percent — was invested in traditional IRA plans, which have been available
for the longest amount of time. Of the remaining amount, $134 billion was
invested in Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) plans, $77.6 billion in Roth
IRAs, $10.4 billion in Savings Incentive Match Plans for Employees
(SIMPLE) and $0.3 billion in Education IRAs.

In addition, 15.1 million taxpayers, or 9.5 percent of those eligible,
contributed to an IRA in 2000. The amount of their contributions totaled
$36.5 billion (an average of $2,412 per taxpayer), of which $12.3 billion
was tax-deductible.

The Bulletin also features information on individual income tax rates and
shares for tax year 2001. There were 130.3 million individual tax returns,
of which almost 94.8 million, or 72.8 percent, were classified as taxable
returns. Adjusted gross income (AGI) on taxable returns fell 4 percent to
$5,847 billion. Total income tax fell 10.4 percent.

Other topics featured include selected income and tax items from
inflation-indexed individual tax returns from 1990-2001, S corporations,
unrelated business income returns and foreign-earned income and tax
credits. They cover the following information:

• Inflation-adjusted individual income tax data are presented by 11 income
classes, including income classes of $10 million or more (which had
previously been published for Tax Years 2000 and 2001 only). For Tax Year
2001, about 130.3 million returns were filed, a 14.5 percent increase from
the 113.7 million returns filed for 1990. This growth in the number of

returns has not been uniform among the various income classes. For
example, while the number of returns with real AGI between $1 to under
$20,000 increased 9 percent and the number with AGI between $20,000 and
$50,000 increased 11.3 percent, the number of returns for all groups above
$100,000 increased by at least 69 percent.
• A total of nearly 3 million S corporation returns were filed for Tax
Year 2001, an increase of over 4.4 percent from Tax Year 2000. S
corporations continue to be the single most frequent corporate entity
choice, representing 58.2 percent of all corporate entities. The number of
shareholders for S corporations increased to nearly 5.4 million, up 3.1
percent from the previous year.
• Nonprofit organizations filed an estimated 38,567 Forms 990-T, Exempt
Organization Business Income Tax Returns, for Tax Year 2000. Overall,
organizations reporting unrelated business income (UBI) filed 8.5 percent
fewer returns for 2000, the second consecutive tax year that the number of
filings fell. Returns with gross UBI of $10,000 or less, the threshold for
being exempted from filing return schedules and reporting detailed
information on deductions, decreased by 15.3 percent; those with higher
amounts of gross UBI decreased by 3.6 percent.
• U.S. taxpayers living abroad reported $27.4 billion in foreign-earned
income for 2001. They filed 294,763 individual income tax returns, an
increase in real percentage terms of 15.1 percent from 1996 (the last year
for which similar statistics were collected). Along with this, the
foreign-earned income exclusion increased by 3.1 percent to $14.1 billion,
while the exclusion for certain employer-provided housing expenses fell
from over $2.1 billion for 1996 to just over $1.9 billion for 2001, a
decrease of 9.8 percent.

The Spring Bulletin also features articles on the Federal Empowerment Zone
Employment credit and interest-charge domestic international sales
corporations. It includes historical data on income, deductions, and tax
reported on returns filed by individuals, corporations and unincorporated
businesses, with selected data presented for estates. Statistics are also
presented on tax collections, including excise taxes by type, and refunds
for recent years.

The Statistics of Income Bulletin is available from the Superintendent of
Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh,
PA 15250-7954. The annual subscription rate is $53 ($74.20 foreign).
Single issues cost $39 ($48.75 foreign). For more information about these
data, call the SOI Statistical Information Services office at (202)
874-0410. To access the Spring 2004 Statistics of Income Bulletin, visit
the IRS Website at www.irs.gov and click on Tax Stats in the upper
left-hand corner. From the Tax Stats page, select SOI Bulletins, located
under Statistical Publications.


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