How much of federal individual income tax revenue comes from ordinary income versus capital gains for the top 1% in 2022?

1. What claim was tested and why it matters — the central question that’s missing a direct answer

The original query asks a narrowly framed fiscal question: what share of federal individual income tax revenue paid by the top 1% in 2022 came from ordinary wage and non-capital income versus realized capital gains. This distinction matters because policy debates about tax fairness and effective rates hinge on whether high earners’ contributions derive from wages or wealth realization, and because capital gains are taxed under different statutory rates and timing rules than ordinary income, affecting both distributional impacts and behavioral responses ^{[3] [4]}. The supplied analyses collectively demonstrate that the dataset lacks a direct tabulation of tax receipts categorized by income type for the top 1% in that tax year, leaving the core claim unproven by these materials ^{[5] [6]}.

2. What the sources do tell us about the top 1%’s tax share — a partial but important fact

Several of the provided items report a clear aggregate figure: the top 1% of income-tax filers accounted for about 40% of federal individual income tax revenue in 2022, which the dataset quantifies as approximately $854.5 billion paid by that group ^{[1] [2]}. That statistic is useful for context because it establishes the magnitude of the top 1%’s fiscal contribution, but it does not disaggregate those receipts by income category. The sources consistently note that taxable income categories include capital gains and ordinary income, but they stop short of breaking down the top 1%’s payments into those buckets ^{[7] [2]}.

3. What the sources explain about ordinary income versus capital gains — tax mechanics and typical framing

The dataset contains explanatory material on how ordinary income and capital gains are defined and taxed differently, describing distinct rate schedules, preferential long-term capital gains rates, and the basic rules that govern recognition and timing of gains ^{[3] [4]}. Those descriptions clarify why a split would matter: capital gains often face lower statutory rates and are realized intermittently, which means that the share of taxes coming from gains for high-income taxpayers can fluctuate year-to-year and is sensitive to asset sales and market conditions. The sources are consistent in explaining the mechanics but do not provide the empirical revenue split for the top 1% in 2022 ^{[5] [8]}.

4. Why the provided materials fail to answer the split — a data and methodology gap

Across the collection, the recurring limitation is identical: none of the provided items contain a tabulation of federal income tax receipts by income type specifically for the top 1% in 2022. The dataset therefore suffers from both a data absence and an implicit methodology gap, because producing that split requires linking IRS or Treasury revenue accounting (tax receipts by source) to taxpayer distribution tables (who paid those receipts) and then allocating receipts to income categories for the top 1% cohort. The available texts indicate what would be needed to compute the split, but the actual matched revenue-by-source-by-income-group dataset is missing from these sources ^{[5] [7] [9]}.

5. How to get a precise answer and what caveats to expect — next steps for verification

To produce a credible ordinary-vs-capital-gains split for the top 1% in 2022, the authoritative next step is to consult IRS Statistics of Income (SOI) distributional tables and Treasury/IRS receipts-by-source reports for 2022, then reconcile them to isolate receipts from ordinary income versus capital gains attributable to the top 1% cohort. Analysts should expect caveats: capital gains realization is volatile year-to-year, allocation methods (e.g., imputing gains to income brackets) vary, and business passthrough income blurs ordinary versus capital distinctions. The provided materials point users toward these concepts and the need for primary IRS/Treasury data, but they do not supply the matching figures to answer the original question ^{[3] [1] [6]}.