Where does your income rank
in the US?
Your income percentile among the 153.1 million tax returns filed for tax year 2023, read off the IRS's own published ladder — all the way up to the top 0.001%. Median AGI $53,801; top 10% from $187,608; top 1% from $675,602.
Read the full answer — method, rates and figures
Quick answer: $85,000 sits at about the 67th percentile of the 153.1 million returns filed for tax year 2023 — interpolated between the IRS's published $69,564 floor for the top 40% and its $91,224 floor for the top 30%, so read it as ≈. It clears the IRS's published floor for the top 40% — the narrowest band the IRS publishes that this return qualifies for — a group paying an average federal income tax rate of 16.26% and carrying 93.9% of all federal income tax.
The published floors for tax year 2023: median $53,801, top 25% $105,604, top 10% $187,608, top 5% $272,209, top 1% $675,602, top 0.1% $3,100,950 (IRS Statistics of Income, SOI Table 4.1). Adjusted gross income on a TAX RETURN — not a household, not a person, and not the same as the Census's $80,610 median household income.
General information, not tax advice.
The AGI line on your Form 1040 — not gross salary, not take-home. Filing jointly? Enter the return’s combined AGI: the IRS ranks returns, not people.
Your percentile
≈ 67th
Published band
Top 40%
Median AGI
$53,801
Group avg tax rate
16.3%
$85,000 sits at about the 67th percentile of the 153.1 million returns filed for tax year 2023 — interpolated between the IRS's published $69,564 floor for the top 40% and its $91,224 floor for the top 30%, so read it as ≈. It clears the IRS's published floor for the top 40% — the narrowest band the IRS publishes that this return qualifies for — a group paying an average federal income tax rate of 16.26% and carrying 93.9% of all federal income tax.
Adjusted gross income on a tax return — not a person, not a household, and not the Census's $80,610 median household income. IRS floors are published and exact; a figure between two floors is interpolated on a log scale and marked ≈. Data year 2023: incomes have risen since, so the same figure ranks slightly lower today.
Written by Ada, Richify's AI Financial Health Assessor — an AI author, presented as one · our editorial standards · Last updated 9 September 2026 · Sources: IRS Statistics of Income SOI Table 4.1 (tax year 2023); US Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2023.
Last reviewed 9 September 2026 by the Richify AI agent team.
Reviewed by Ada, Richify's AI Financial Health Assessor — an AI author, presented as one.
This is the textbook answer. Want to see this calculated against your actual accounts?
Connect them to Richify →Income is a flow. Net worth is the score.
Richify pulls your home, 401(k), brokerage and savings into one number and shows where it ranks for your age — then tracks it as your income compounds into wealth. Free, no bank linking.
See my net worth rank — FreeHow it works
Once a year the IRS Statistics of Income division publishes the AGI floor for fourteen descending cumulative percentiles of individual returns — the top 50%, 40%, 30%, 25%, 20%, 10%, 5%, 4%, 3%, 2%, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01% and 0.001%. Your rank at any of those fourteen points is a published figure. Between two of them this page interpolates on a log scale of income and marks the result ≈, which is the right shape for a distribution whose top rungs span $675,602 to $78,617,933. Nothing is fitted to a curve and nothing is projected forward.
The unit is a return, not a person or a household. A married couple filing jointly is one return carrying two incomes, so joint filers sit higher on this ladder than either spouse would alone — and that, more than anything else, is why the thresholds feel high to single filers and low to couples. The population is all individual returns excluding dependents: 153,076,443 returns for tax year 2023.
🛑 What this page refuses to do. Table 4.1 is descending-cumulative, so its lowest rung is the median. There is no published floor below $53,801, and rather than interpolate down to zero we report the bottom half’s own aggregates — which the table does support — and leave the percentile blank. A plausible number invented from data that does not contain it would be worse than an honest gap.
Sources: IRS Statistics of Income, SOI Table 4.1, tax year 2023 — all individual returns excluding dependents, current-dollar AGI floors, average tax rates and shares. Constant-dollar figures use the IRS’s own CPI-U deflator. Median household income for contrast: US Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2023. Verified 2026-09-09.
US income percentiles 2023 — the full IRS ladder
Every row is a published IRS floor. The right-hand columns are what most “top 1%” articles leave out: what each group actually pays, and how much of the total tax bill it carries. The top 1% holds 20.6% of all AGI and pays 38.4% of all federal income tax; the top 10% pays 70.5% of it.
Median (50th)
$53,801
Top 10% from
$187,608
Top 1% from
$675,602
Top 0.1% from
$3,100,950
| Group | Percentile | AGI floor | Avg tax rate | Share of AGI | Share of tax |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 0.001% | 99.999th | $78,617,933 | 23.61% | 2.1% | 3.5% |
| Top 0.01% | 99.99th | $16,086,174 | 25.24% | 4.7% | 8.5% |
| Top 0.1%peak rate | 99.9th | $3,100,950 | 26.65% | 10.1% | 19.0% |
| Top 1% | 99th | $675,602 | 26.27% | 20.6% | 38.4% |
| Top 2% | 98th | $453,137 | 25.21% | 26.1% | 46.6% |
| Top 3% | 97th | $361,737 | 24.29% | 30.2% | 51.9% |
| Top 4% | 96th | $307,631 | 23.57% | 33.5% | 56.0% |
| Top 5% | 95th | $272,209 | 22.97% | 36.4% | 59.3% |
| Top 10% | 90th | $187,608 | 20.91% | 47.6% | 70.5% |
| Top 20% | 80th | $123,406 | 18.57% | 62.8% | 82.6% |
| Top 25% | 75th | $105,604 | 17.77% | 68.5% | 86.3% |
| Top 30% | 70th | $91,224 | 17.17% | 73.5% | 89.4% |
| Top 40% | 60th | $69,564 | 16.26% | 81.5% | 93.9% |
| Top 50%median | 50th | $53,801 | 15.57% | 87.7% | 96.7% |
| Bottom 50% | — | under $53,801 | 3.73% | 12.3% | 3.3% |
IRS Statistics of Income, SOI Table 4.1, tax year 2023. All individual returns excluding dependents (153,076,443 returns; total AGI $15,196,869 million). Current dollars, not adjusted for inflation. The bottom-50% row is arithmetic on the table’s own totals, not a published rung — the IRS does not publish percentile floors below the median.
The average tax rate peaks at the top 0.1% — and then falls
This is in the IRS’s own table and it is not what most people expect. Average federal income tax rates rise steadily up the ladder — 15.57% for the top half, 20.91% for the top 10%, 26.27% for the top 1% — and reach 26.65% at the top 0.1%. Above that they go the other way: 25.24% for the top 0.01% and 23.61% for the top 0.001%. The standard explanation is composition — at the very top a larger share of income is long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, taxed on a lower schedule than wages.
Two cautions before this gets quoted as something it is not. It is an average rate over a group, not anyone’s marginal rate, and it covers federal income tax only — no payroll tax, no state income tax, no corporate tax attributed back to shareholders. Payroll tax in particular is capped, so including it would steepen the picture at the bottom and flatten it further at the top.
Why $53,801 and $80,610 are both the "median US income"
Neither figure is wrong, and the difference is not a rounding argument — it is a different unit of account. The Census Bureau’s $80,610 is median household income for 2023, up from $77,540 the year before, measured by survey. The IRS’s $53,801 is the median adjusted gross income on one tax return, measured from administrative records.
Three things drive the $26,809 gap. A household can contain two single filers, which is one Census household and two IRS returns, each ranked separately. AGI subtracts above-the-line adjustments — deductible retirement and HSA contributions, student-loan interest, half of self-employment tax — so it is below gross income by construction. And returns are filed by anyone with a filing requirement, including people with very small incomes who barely register in a household median. Use the Census figure to ask “how does my household compare?” and this one to ask “where does my tax return rank?”
And one framing worth keeping: income is a flow, and it describes your financial position far less well than people assume. A $300,000 earner with no assets and a large mortgage is in a weaker position than a $90,000 earner who owns a home outright. To rank the stock rather than the flow, use the US net worth percentiles, the net worth percentile calculator or the average net worth by age.
Thresholds rose in dollars and fell in purchasing power
The IRS publishes each floor twice — in current dollars and in constant dollars on its own CPI-U deflator — which makes 2023 a clean example of why the distinction matters. The top 1% floor rose $12,438 in cash terms, from $663,164 to $675,602. In constant dollars it went the other way. Higher up, the top 0.1% floor fell even in nominal terms, from $3,271,387 to $3,100,950.
| Group | 2023 floor | 2022 floor | 2023 in constant $ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top 0.1% | $3,100,950 | $3,271,387 | $1,330,309 |
| Top 1% | $675,602 | $663,164 | $289,834 |
| Top 5% | $272,209 | $261,591 | $116,778 |
| Top 10% | $187,608 | $178,611 | $80,484 |
| Top 25% | $105,604 | $99,857 | $45,304 |
| Top 50% | $53,801 | $50,339 | $23,081 |
IRS SOI Table 4.1. Constant dollars use the IRS’s own CPI-U (urban consumers) deflator, so the constant-dollar column is comparable across years while the current-dollar columns are not.
How to use this calculator
- Enter your adjusted gross income — the AGI line on your Form 1040, not your gross salary and not your take-home pay.
- If you file jointly, enter the return's combined AGI: the IRS ranks returns, so a joint return is compared against other joint returns and single filers alike.
- Read your percentile and the narrowest published group you qualify for — top 25%, top 10%, top 1%, and further up if it applies.
- Scan the ladder below for the thresholds themselves, and for what each group's average tax rate and share of total tax actually is.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
What income puts you in the top 1% in the US?
An adjusted gross income of $675,602 for tax year 2023 — the IRS's own published floor, not an estimate (SOI Table 4.1). The top 5% starts at $272,209, the top 10% at $187,608 and the top 25% at $105,604.
Two things to hold before you compare yourself to it. This ranks TAX RETURNS, not people — a married couple filing jointly is one return carrying two incomes — and it is AGI, which is your total income minus above-the-line adjustments, so it is lower than your gross pay.
What is the top 0.1% and top 1% income in the US?
The IRS publishes further up the ladder than almost anyone quotes. For tax year 2023: the top 1% starts at $675,602, the top 0.1% at $3,100,950, the top 0.01% at $16,086,174, and the top 0.001% — about 1,531 returns in the whole country — at $78,617,933.
The gaps widen violently: it takes about 4.6x the top-1% floor to reach the top 0.1%, and about 25x the top-0.1% floor to reach the top 0.001%.
Why is the median here $53,801 when the median US income is $80,610?
Because they measure different things, and this is the single most common misreading of IRS data. $80,610 is the Census Bureau's median HOUSEHOLD income for 2023, from the Current Population Survey — every household's income added together.
$53,801 is the median ADJUSTED GROSS INCOME on a single tax RETURN, from IRS administrative records. A two-earner household appears once in the Census figure with both salaries and, if they file jointly, once in the IRS figure with both salaries too — but a household containing two single filers is one Census household and two IRS returns.
Add AGI's adjustments and the $26,809 gap is composition, not contradiction.
Do the richest Americans pay the highest average tax rate?
No — and the IRS's own table is the evidence. The average income tax rate climbs to a peak of 26.65% at the top 0.1%, then FALLS as you go higher: 25.24% for the top 0.01% and 23.61% for the top 0.001%.
The usual explanation is composition — at the very top, more income arrives as long-term capital gains and qualified dividends, which are taxed on a lower schedule than wages. For context the all-returns average is 14.11%, and the bottom half averages about 3.7%.
What if my income is below the median — what percentile am I?
This page will not tell you, because the IRS does not publish it. SOI Table 4.1 is a DESCENDING cumulative table: its lowest rung is the 50th percentile at $53,801, and there is no published floor beneath that.
What the same table does support, by arithmetic on its own totals: the bottom half is 76.5 million returns holding 12.3% of all AGI, an average of $24,472 each, and paying 3.3% of all federal income tax — about $913 per return, an average rate near 3.7%. We would rather give you that than invent a rung.
Did the top 1% threshold actually go up in 2023?
In dollars yes, in purchasing power no — and both are in the same IRS table. The top-1% floor rose from $663,164 in 2022 to $675,602 in 2023, up $12,438.
Measured in constant dollars on the IRS's own CPI-U deflator it FELL, from $296,188 to $289,834. The same is true further up: the top-0.1% floor dropped from $3,271,387 to $3,100,950 even in nominal terms.
Always check which dollars a threshold is quoted in before reading a trend into it.
Is AGI the same as my salary?
No. Adjusted gross income is everything taxable added together — wages, self-employment profit, interest, dividends, capital gains, retirement distributions, rents — minus above-the-line adjustments such as deductible retirement contributions, HSA contributions, the deductible half of self-employment tax and student-loan interest. It is calculated BEFORE the standard or itemized deduction, so it is higher than your taxable income and usually lower than your gross pay.
If you want the rank of what you actually keep, or of your wealth rather than your income, the net worth tools below are the better instrument.
More Free Financial Calculators
Mortgage Calculator
Estimate monthly repayments, interest, and amortisation.
🔄Refinance Calculator
See how much you could save by switching lenders.
📈Compound Interest Calculator
Visualise how your savings grow over time.
💰Net Worth Calculator
Track your assets minus liabilities in one place.
🔥FIRE Calculator
Find out when you can reach financial independence.
💱Currency Converter
Convert between currencies with live exchange rates.
Further Reading
Income is a flow. Net worth is the score.
Richify pulls your home, 401(k), brokerage and savings into one number and shows where it ranks for your age — then tracks it as your income compounds into wealth. Free, no bank linking.
See my net worth rank — Free