# My income is in the top one percent! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 2, 2003, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169 "2003-10-02T18:26:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![jk1245](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/49beb7/32.png) [@jk1245](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jk1245)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2003, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/21 "2003-10-02T21:20:45Z")
0.72% here. Me and Billy Gates will be out yachting if anyone needs us. ---
**Author:** ![TaxGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@TaxGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TaxGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2003, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/22 "2003-10-02T21:38:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ShibbOleth \* > \*\*I put in $250K (which I made on paper a couple of years ago, but it was sort of a tax scam for my company), and it couldn’t even calculate where I rank. I’m sure there are PLENTY of people who made more, but just how many? \*\* Dude, keep pulling those tax scams and you’ll get the opportunity to improve your checkers game way more than you ever imagined. (I stole that from one of my tax profs, BTW.) Oh, and me and the wife together: > [@](#): > > You are in the top 0.166% richest people in the world. I could buy and sell and buy back and then hypothecate and then monetize and then sell and lease back and then do a LILO on most of the folks in this thread! Do not get on my bad side! > [@](#): > > Oh, and in case you’re interested you are the 9,980,065th richest person in the world. I plan on rolling over at least 8 million of those folks before I hit 30 (4 years). Watch the flurk out! ---
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2003, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/23 "2003-10-02T21:41:30Z")
A couple of observations: First, I entered my hypothetical salary of $100 per annum and was told I should donate 6 cents to them. Also, I should feel lucky to be in the top 95.98% of the world’s richest. I then entered my other hypothetical salary of $1 quintillion per annum and was told that I should donate the princely sum of nearly $700 trillion to them. Remarkably, I was still only the 107,565th richest person on earth. This reminds me of that “Lemonade Stand” computer game (edutainment before the term was coined). I spent way too much time giggle about selling only 1 glass of lemonade in a whole week, but selling it for $20. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/24 "2003-10-02T21:45:07Z")
Hmmm. I am in the top 0.211% richest people in the world. There are 5,987,327,435 people poorer than I. Suuuuure. ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/25 "2003-10-03T01:25:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by HerMajestyLorna \* > \*\*How accurate is this site? > > It says that someone who makes $200,000/year is not only in the top .001% of the world but, shockingly, is the 107,565 richest perosn in the world. Can this be true? It doesn’t seem to work. \*\* Others have debunked the general accuracy of the site. Specifically, in 2000 there were 2,771,777 individual tax returns reporting an adjusted gross income of $200,000 or more ([Big, honkin’ 53-page .pdf cite, so if you’re on dialup, just trust me on this](http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/00hiinco.pdf)). ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/26 "2003-10-03T01:35:19Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TaxGuy \* > \*\*Dude, keep pulling those tax scams and you’ll get the opportunity to improve your checkers game way more than you ever imagined. (I stole that from one of my tax profs, BTW.) > > \*\* Dude, not my scam, my (former) employer’s. It wasn’t really a scam in the true sense, just maybe I cleared around 100K but my adjusted Gross Income was around $250K because I was transferred twice on overseas assignments, then got a 30% expat allowance, housing allowance, car allowance, driver allowance, private tuition for my kids. All this was reported as income to me, then the company grossed up my income. It _was_ sweet while it lasted, and my salary and perks in the country I was in would have been like having at least $250K in salary in the USA, maybe more, because I was also tax equalized. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2003, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169/27 "2003-10-03T01:36:17Z")
I could certainly see the operators of that site being biased towards wanting you to feel like you’re in the spare money class. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-income-is-in-the-top-one-percent/205169.md?page=1)