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Card Consolidation Credit Debt The 400 wealthiest taxpayers accounted for more than 1 percent of all the income in the United States in the year 2000, more than double their share just eight years earlier, according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service. But their tax burden plummeted over the period.

Income earned by working for it. Interest, dividends and other kinds of profits are examples of unearned income. Earned income credit. A tax credit available to individuals with low earned income. An individual is entitled to the full amount of this credit even if it exceeds the amount of tax otherwise due. Employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). sharing plan in which benefits come in the form of stock in the employer.

Credit Union The data, in a report that the I.R.S. released last night, shows that the average income of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers was almost $174 million in 2000. That was nearly quadruple the $46.8 million average in 1992. The minimum income to qualify for the list was $86.8 million in 2000, more than triple the minimum income of $24.4 million of the 400 wealthiest taxpayers in 1992.

For the full year 2001, ScanSoft reported total revenues of $63.9 million, up 30 percent from revenues of $49.1 million in 2000. Income from operations for the full year ended December 31, 2001 was $10.6 million, compared with a loss of $6.8 million for the same period in 2000. Net income was $10.6 million, or $0.19 per share, versus a net loss of $7.6 million, or $0.18 per share, a year ago. In both cases, income (loss) from operations and net income (loss) related intangibles and, in 2000, the effect of a restructuring charge. After including these items, ScanSoft reported a net loss of $16.9 million, or $0.34 per share, for 2001 compared with a net loss of $53.3 million, or $1.26 per share, for 2000. ScanSoft's operational cash flows for the full year were $10.4 million.

Merchant Credit Guide Co While the sharp growth in incomes over that period coincided with the stock market bubble, other factors appear to account for much of the increase. A cut in capital gains tax rates in 1997 to 20 percent from 28 percent encouraged long-term holders of assets, like privately owned businesses, to sell them, and big increases in executive compensation thrust corporate chiefs into the ranks of the nation's aristocracy.

ScanSoft reported fourth quarter 2001 revenues of $18.9 million, a 35 percent increase over fourth quarter 2000 revenues of $14.0 million. Income from operations for the fourth quarter of 2001 was $4.6 million, fold increase over operating income of $0.6 million reported during the same period a year ago. Net income before intangibles was $4.7 million, or $0.08 per diluted share, compared with net income before intangibles of $0.4 million, or $0.01 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2000. related intangibles. After including this item, ScanSoft reported a net loss of $2.4 million, or $0.04 per share, in the fourth quarter of 2001 compared with a net loss of $6.2 million, or $0.13 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2000. ScanSoft's operational cash flows for the fourth quarter were $4.4 million.

Apply Online For Credit Card This year's tax cut reduced the capital gains rate further, to 15 percent.

For the first six months of 2001, ScanSoft reported total revenues of $27.9 million, up 30.3 percent from revenues of $21.4 million in the first half of 2000. Income from operations was $2.8 million, as compared to a six month loss of $7.4 million in 2000. Net income was $2.4 million versus a net loss of $7.7 million for the six months ended June 30, 2000. In both cases, income (loss) from operations and net income (loss) exclude amortization of intangible assets and the effect of a 2000 restructuring charge. After including the effect of amortization and a 2000 restructuring charge, ScanSoft reported a net loss of $11.3 million, or $0.24 per share, in the first six months of 2001 compared with a net loss of $40.0 million, or $1.05 per share, for the first half of 2000.

By Card Credit Debt Debt Guide The data from 2000 is the latest available from the I.R.S., but various government reports indicate that salaries, dividends and other forms of income have continued to rise since then, even as the stock market has fallen.

ScanSoft's total revenues for the first quarter of 2001 were $12.8 million, an increase of 73 percent over $7.4 million in the same period of 2000. ScanSoft reported income from operations for the first quarter of 2001 of $127, 000 versus a loss from operations of $3.7 million in the first quarter of 2000. Net income was a loss of $67, 000, or $0.00 per share, compared with a loss of $3.7 million, or $0.12 per share for the first quarter of 2000. Both income from operations and net loss exclude amortization of intangible assets. After including the effect of amortization, ScanSoft reported a net loss of $6.9 million, or $0.15 per share, in the first quarter of 2001 compared with a net loss of $23.9 million, or $0.78 per share, for the first quarter of 2000.

Credit Repair The top 400 reported 1.1 percent of all income earned in 2000, up from 0.5 percent in 1992. Their taxes grew at a much slower rate, from 1 percent of all taxes in 1992 to 1.6 percent in 2000, when their tax bills averaged $38.6 million each.

Active Credit Credit Guide Those numbers can be read to show that the wealthiest, as a group, carried a disproportionate share of the overall tax burden - 1.6 percent of all taxes, versus just 1.1 percent of all income - evidence that all sides in the tax debate will be able to find ammunition in the data.

Credit Score In 2000, the top 400 on average paid 22.3 percent of their income in federal income tax, down from 26.4 percent in 1992 and a peak of 29.9 percent in 1995. Two factors explain most of this decline, according to the I.R.S.: reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and bigger gifts to charity.

Bad Car Credit Guide Loan Had President Bush's latest tax cuts been in effect in 2000, the average tax bill for the top 400 would have been about $30.4 million - a savings of $8.3 million, or more than a fifth, according to an analysis of the I.R.S. data by The New York Times. That would have resulted in an average tax rate of 17.5 percent.

Bad Credit Loan The rate actually paid by the top 400 in 2000 was about the same as that paid by a single person making $123,000 or a married couple with two children earning $226,000, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, a labor-backed group whose calculations are respected by a broad spectrum of tax experts.

Credit Definition Derivative The group favors higher taxes on the wealthy, and its director, Robert S. McIntyre, said yesterday that the I.R.S. data bolsters that viewpoint. "Regardless of which party these 400 are in, these are the guys Bush wants to help, even though they have so much money they don't know what to do with it," he said. "How Bush feels about the half of the population that doesn't have much money is he got them a tax cut worth an average of $19 each."

Bad Credit Mortgage William W. Beach, a tax expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization that favors lowering taxes for all Americans, said that the top 400 taxpayers made "the significant contribution" to government revenue - about one in every $64 of individual income tax paid. Cutting taxes, he said, will prompt the wealthy to invest more in the economy's growth.

The Insider Guide To Credit Detailed information about high-income Americans has become increasingly important in setting tax policy, because the government relies on the top 1.3 million households for 37.4 percent of individual federal income tax revenue. The half of Americans who earned less than $27,682 in 2000, paid less than 4 percent of income taxes.

Business Credit Card All of the I.R.S. data is based on adjusted gross income, the figure reported on the last line on the front page of individual income tax returns. Interest earned on municipal bonds, which are exempt from tax, is not included.

Banker Complete Credit Guide Over the nine years of tax returns that were examined for the new report, only a handful of taxpayers showed up in the top 400 every year, according to I.R.S. officials. In all, about 2,200 taxpayers made the cut even once. There were a few incomes of more than $1 billion a year in the group, but none as high as $10 billion.

Credit Card Application The names of the wealthiest taxpayers are not disclosed in the report, which was prepared at the urging of Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan business school professor who serves on an I.R.S. advisory panel and is a leading authority on taxation of high-income Americans.

Credit Guide Managing The figures do not include the incomes of the many wealthy Americans who use shelters to reduce their reported incomes below the level of the top 400.

Credit Card Offer In 1999 and 2000, for example, William T. Esrey - then the chief executive of Sprint, the telecommunications company - earned more than $150 million in stock option profits, lofting him onto many lists of the best-paid corporate managers.

Merchant Credit Guide Company That income might have put Mr. Esrey in the I.R.S.'s top 400 taxpayers. But, as later came to light, Mr. Esrey bought a tax shelter from Ernst & Young, the accounting firm, designed to let him delay reporting the profits for tax purposes until the year 2030. Sprint's board forced Mr. Esrey to resign in March after he acknowledged that the shelter was the subject of an I.R.S. audit.

Bad Credit Over the nine years reviewed in the new report, the incomes of the top 400 taxpayers increased at 15 times the rate of the bottom 90 percent of Americans; their average income rose 17 percent, to $27,000, from 1992 to 2000.

Collection Collection Complete Long-term capital gains accounted for 64 percent of the income of the top 400 in 2000, nearly double the level in 1992. Wages contributed 16.7 percent to the incomes of the top 400 in 2000, down from 26.2 percent in 1992, and dividends made up 2.8 percent.

Credit Counseling A second report that the I.R.S. will make public today shows that the number of Americans with high incomes who pay no taxes anywhere in the world has reached a record. In 2000, there were 2,022 Americans with incomes of more than $200,000 who paid no income tax anywhere in the world, up from just 37 in 1977, when the report was first issued.

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