April 15 is just one week away. Have you filed your tax
return yet? The IRS estimates
that over 247 million federal income tax returns will be filed this year. That
means that in addition to collecting revenue, the IRS also collects massive
amounts of economic data.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a
research organization at Syracuse University, uses IRS data to compile rankings of various
types of income by state and county. The results are often surprising. For
example, it may surprise you to learn that in 2013, Wyoming had a higher
average dividend income than any other state. In Wyoming’s Teton County, the
average dividend income was $32,793, nearly twenty times higher than the
national average. (Teton County, with a population of just over ten thousand,
is home to Harrison Ford, Dick Cheney, and Walmart heiress Christy Walton, the richest
woman in the world.) The state with the highest average adjusted gross
income (AGI) was Connecticut, at $91,417. That’s quite a contrast to the
average AGI of just $15,379 in Gooding County, Idaho. Other categories of data
analyzed by TRAC include wages and salaries, interest income, and exemptions.
In addition to IRS data, TRAC also reports on other aspects
of government, including law enforcement, immigration, and the judiciary. For more
information, visit the “About
Us” page on the organization’s website.
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