4000 Millionaires in Willard's 47%
Link: http://money.cnn.com/2012/09/18/pf/taxes/romney-income-taxes-millionaires/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Nobody's really talking about this slice of the pie, but Mitt Romney's "47%" who pay no federal income tax include several thousand of the highest-income households in the country.
The Tax Policy Center estimates that 4,000 households with incomes over $1 million ended up with zero federal income tax liability in 2011. Another 14,000 made between $500,000 and $1 million.
Combined, those households represented just 0.025% of the more than 76 million who did not pay.
But their presence in the No Tax Club underlines the fact that the tax code is chock full of tax breaks and exceptions benefiting people up and down the income scale.
There are various reasons why a household booking more than $1 million in income could owe nothing in federal income tax, experts note.
Related: 6 of the richest owed no income tax in 2009
Among them, people who live off their investment income and report large investment losses in a given year may be able to offset the taxes owed on their investment gains.
Or they may have gotten a lot of their income from tax-free investments, such as municipal bonds.