Federal Income Tax Table - We List The Best Ones

Federal income tax tables show the percentage of income or tax rate that is paid according to the amount of income a person earns and the year in which that person earned it. Tax rates are approximate and calculated down to the last dollar, so often you will actually pay somewhat less as a percentage of income that your actual tax bracket suggests.

A number of websites and calculators are available to anyone who wants to play around with a federal income tax table and see how they work.

The Tax Foundation posts a chart that shows federal income tax tables all the way back to the year 1913 at http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/151.html. It is fascinating to see how income tax rates have changed from year to year and throughout history. For instance, in 1913, a married couple filing jointly who made over $500,000 would be taxed at 7% of their income. Today that the tax rate for that same couple would be at least 37%, (except that they would almost certainly take lots of deductions and find ways to pay much less; the tax code is much more horrifically complex now).

Moneychimp.com offers a good online calculator that you can use to find your own tax rate and tax bracket, and does a good job of explaining why your tax bracket isn’t necessarily the same as the percentage you will pay in income tax. You can use that calculator, among others, at http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm.

Dinkytown.net has tons of great calculators, including federal income tax table calculators that let you see what you would owe the federal government according to how much you earn. These are available for free at http://www.dinkytown.net/java/Tax1040.html.

Wikipedia, now an old standby for internet info on practically anything, posts a great article about kinds of income, how federal income taxes evolved, and how federal income tax tables work, as well as lots of other great facts and historical notes on the topic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States.

It may interest you to know that the United States did not always have a federal income tax department. The idea first took hold during the Civil War as a means of funding the war itself. Taxes were charged only on money made through the rental of property or dividend income, and as such were actually a tax on personal property.

In 1913 Congress passed the 16th Amendment, which states that:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Protests ensued, and some tax protesters to this day maintain that the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified, thereby making the assessing of tax on earned income by the federal government against the law.

In 2007 William J. Benson was convicted of fraud for selling an internet document that purported to present a legal argument showing that federal income tax was not valid based on the failure to properly ratify the 16th Amendment. 

If you think you might not have to pay federal income tax because of this sort of argument, you might want to think twice about that. Wesley Snipes had to think twice about it, and will likely think about it some more from his prison cell over the next two years.

The best source of all for federal income tax tables, and anything regarding federal income tax or questions about federal income tax, is the official IRS website, www.irs.gov. If you earned less than $54,000, you can even file your taxes electronically for free there. They have all the federal income tax tables there anyone could ever wish to see, and then some.

And, yes, you do have to pay them.