Who pays
Who pays California’s income tax, and is the mix changing?
Shares of resident income-tax liability. These groups are not marginal brackets, and they are not scored.
Every chart on this desk · click to zoom
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Who pays California income tax: share of resident tax liability by income group
40.2% of resident PIT liabilit · 2024↘ worsening
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Top 1%: share of income vs. share of income tax (and bottom 80%)
24.4% of resident AGI · 2024↘ worsening
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AGI needed to enter each top group (nominal and inflation-adjusted)
973,097US$ AGI, 2024 dollars (CPI · 2024↘ worsening
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What income is taxed: wages vs. net capital gains (California residents)
199.5US$ billions (nominal) · 2024↘ worsening
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Returns with AGI of $1 million+: their share of returns, wages, capital gains and tax
35.7% · 2022↗ improving
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Tax owed by tax year vs. cash collected by fiscal year
114US$ billions (nominal) · 2024↗ improving
Shown as facts. Not scored. The method does not assign a direction or a strain score to income-tax shares. A rising top-1% share can mean the rich got richer, or that everyone else’s taxes fell — so we show it, not judge it.
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Who pays California income tax: share of resident tax liability by income group
Income groups are non-overlapping groups of resident returns, not marginal tax brackets. The top 0.1% sits inside the top 1% and is drawn separately so it is not counted twice.
Dashed = preliminary or estimateFull page, sources & data →