Where Vermont’s top incomes come from
In tax year 2022 it took $164,407 of adjusted gross income to reach Vermont’s top 10% — 31,231 returns that together reported 42.0% of all income on the state’s 312,312 returns. This page shows what that income is made of, how sharply it differs within the top decile, and how it has shifted over two decades. Method & caveats · download the data.
Who earns what, inside the top 10%
The top decile is not one population. Split into its three slices, the bottom of the decile is a salaried group; the top 1% draws most of its income from businesses it owns and assets it sells. Hover or tap any segment for the exact figure, or open the data table beneath each chart. The year control applies to both charts in this part of the page.
Income composition by slice of the top decile — tax year 2022
Each bar is one slice of the top decile. Segments are that slice’s income by source.
TY2018 note: the IRS reported IRA distributions and pensions as a single merged line that year; “Retirement” here is that merged value.
“Other” is AGI minus the seven named sources: rents & royalties, taxable Social Security, unemployment, state refunds, alimony, and everything else not itemized.
How much of each income type flows to the top 10%
If each kind of income were spread evenly across all returns, the top decile would collect 10% of it — the dotted line. Everything beyond the line is concentration.
Top decile’s share of the statewide total, by income type — tax year 2022
Ten years of true-decile data · 2013 – 2022
The IRS has published percentile cuts by state since tax year 2013, plus a one-off 2006 release — shown detached; no state percentile data exists for 2007–2012.
Share of all Vermont AGI reported by the top 10%, 5%, and 1%
What the top decile’s income is made of, year by year
Capital gains swing with markets — the 2021 spike and the 2022 fall are the same asset cycle, not a structural change. Read any single year against the run of years.
The longer view · 2004 – 2022, a fixed-dollar proxy
Income composition of $200,000+ returns, 2004 – 2022
Partnership & S-corp income is only itemized from 2009 (dashed line) — before that it sits inside “Other,” which is why “Other” falls sharply at the break.
Returns above $200,000 as a share of all Vermont returns
Read directly from the “$200,000 or more” class through 2009; summed from the 200–500k, 500k–1M, and $1M+ classes from 2010. This file’s universe includes dependent filers, so its totals sit a few percent above the percentile series’.
Where the high-income returns are · by county, 2022
Vermont counties — returns above $200k, % of county returns · tax year 2022
| County | Value | $200k+ returns |
|---|
Statewide:
Vermont’s own count · through 2024
The Vermont Department of Taxes publishes percentile statistics for resident returns through tax year 2024 — the freshest numbers anywhere, on a different universe (Vermont residents, Vermont filing rules). Shown separately; never merged with the IRS series.
Top-decile share of AGI on Vermont resident returns, 2014 – 2024
The top-10% floor on this count rose from $133,283 (TY2018, first year published) to $180,889 (TY2024); the top-1% floor in 2024 was $586,634.
Method & caveats
Returns, not people
Every figure on this page counts tax returns. A married couple filing jointly is one return — two moderate salaries can clear the top-10% floor together. Nothing here counts high-earning individuals, and none of it counts households.
Three series, three universes
- IRS percentile data (TY2013–2022, plus a one-off TY2006): true percentile cuts of federal AGI over returns with positive AGI, excluding dependent filers. The only source of exact top-decile composition, and the spine of this page.
- IRS Historic Table 2 (TY2004–2022): fixed AGI classes; the $200,000+ class is a proxy, not a decile. Its universe includes dependent filers, so its totals run a few percent higher (336,880 vs 312,312 returns in 2022). Two documented breaks: partnership/S-corp and qualified dividends first itemized in TY2009; the class read directly through 2009 and summed from three classes from 2010. The county map draws on the same program’s TY2022 county file (the $200,000+ stub), so the same caveats apply county by county; disclosure-suppressed county cells, where present, are shown as “not disclosed,” never as zero.
- Vermont Department of Taxes (TY2014–2024): Vermont resident returns under Vermont filing rules. Percentile groups since TY2018; a direct top-decile row 2014–2017. A different count of a different population — charted alone, never merged with the IRS series.
Categories
Named sources are wages & salaries; partnership & S-corp (pass-through business entities); net capital gains; ordinary dividends; Schedule C business income; taxable interest; and retirement (taxable IRA distributions plus pensions — one merged IRS line in TY2018). “Other” is the residual: AGI minus those seven. It holds rents & royalties, taxable Social Security, unemployment, state refunds, and alimony, none of which the source files itemize consistently across the span. The same seven named categories are used in every chart, so “Other” means the same thing everywhere.
Volatility
Capital gains are realized when assets are sold, so they swing with markets: the top decile’s gains share roughly doubled into 2021 and fell back in 2022. No single-year composition figure on this page should be quoted as structural without checking it against the ten-year series.
Sources & downloads
IRS Statistics of Income: AGI percentile data by state and Historic Table 2 · Vermont Department of Taxes income statistics. Every number on this page: tidy CSV · page JSON. The build re-derives the IRS’s own published totals from the raw files and fails if any check drifts.
More Vermont data tools: the School District Comparer · the Legislative Record.
Hunger Mountain Intelligence · IRS SOI (TY2004–2022) · Vermont Department of Taxes (TY2014–2024) · all data embedded in this page · no tracking.