Taxation Legal News

IRS Issues Winter 2004-2005 Statistics of Income Bulletin

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced the release of the Winter 2004-2005 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin.

The Bulletin includes an article on preliminary data from individual income tax returns for 2003. Taxpayers filed 130.6 million U.S. individual income tax returns for 2003. Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) reported on Tax Year 2003 returns totaled $6.2 trillion for 2003, while taxable income was $4.2 trillion and total income tax was $750 billion. The largest component of AGI was salaries and wages, totaling nearly $4.7 trillion. A total of $261.4 billion in business net income was reported on 14.4 million returns.

In addition, the Bulletin contains articles with the following information:

Taxpayers filed just over 130 million returns for Tax Year 2002, of which almost 91 million (or 69.9 percent) were classified as taxable returns. Adjusted gross income on taxable returns totaled $5.6 trillion. The average tax rate was 14.1 percent.

More than 121,000 split-interest trust returns were filed for Tax Year 2002, an increase of 1.2 percent over the number filed for 2001. The total net income of charitable remainder trusts totaled $5.3 billion in 2002. The total book value of assets at the end of the year for all split-interest trusts was $105.6 billion, while distributions to beneficiaries totaled $7.1 million.

Overall, 35,540 organizations reported $7.9 billion of gross "unrelated business income" on their Tax Year 2001 Forms 990-T, Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Returns, filed during 2002 and 2003. Unrelated business (positive) taxable income and the associated unrelated business income tax reported on Form 990-T for Tax Year 2001 totaled $792 million and $226 million, respectively.

For Tax Years 1995-2001, corporation aggregate pretax book income, the amount reported to shareholders, peaked at $853.7 billion in 1999, falling to $221.3 billion in 2001. Aggregate tax net income peaked in 1997 at $607.5 billion, declining to $270.8 billion in 2001. In all years but 2001, aggregate pretax book income exceeded tax net income, reaching a maximum dollar difference of $318.4 billion in 1999.

The SOI Bulletin is a quarterly compilation of information on various topics from Federal tax returns and other documents. The Bulletin 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.

For more information about these data, write the Director, Statistics of Income (SOI) Division, RAS:S, Internal Revenue Service, P.O. Box 2608, Washington, DC 20013-2608. Or, you may call the SOI Statistical Information Services office at (202) 874-0410 or fax your questions to (202) 874-0964 (not toll-free calls).

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).

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	Did You Know?
	There are tax rules if change in accounting method is made Generally, the partnership must get IRS consent to change its method of accounting used to report income (for income as a whole or for any material item). To do so, it must file Form 3115, Application for Change in Accounting Method. See Form 3115 and Pub. 538, Accounting Periods and Methods.