From CNN: Rich get richer, but faster:

The rich got richer as their tax rates fell in 2000 and the trend is likely to continue following President Bush's recent tax cuts, according to published reports Thursday that cited a study by the Internal Revenue Service.

The wealthiest 400 taxpayers in the United States accounted for 1.1 percent of U.S. adjusted gross income in 2000, more than double the rate of 0.5 percent in 1992, according to the New York Times.

And while their tax rate also increased, it increased at a slower rate, to 1.6 percent in 2000 from 1 percent in 1992, the Times reported.

Indeed, the top 400 taxpayers paid 22.3 percent of their income in taxes in 2000, down from 26.4 percent in 1992 and well below the peak of 29.9 percent in 1995, according to the paper.

The article is fine when it states that the top 400 wage earners accounted for 1.1% of US adjusted gross income. What it left out is the percentage of total tax revenues paid by those 400 individuals. According to IRS data reformatted for readability here (IRS data are available on their website in Excel spreadsheet format), the top 1% of wage earners in 2000 accounted for 20.8% of total adjusted gross income and paid 37.4% of income taxes collected that year. This would suggest those 400 individuals paid approximately 2% of all income taxes for the year.

It's also interesting to view what happened during the years 1987 through 2000 on the above-linked source. During that time when there were several tax cuts, the percentage of AGI earned by the top 1% of taxpayers increased from 12.32% to 20.81%. At the same time, the percentage of total taxes paid by these people grew from 24.81% to 37.42%.

Oh, and as an aside, the article covers the period from 1992 through 2000. Lest anyone jump on this as a partisan issue to bash Republicans, it might be useful to recall who was in the White House during that time. To hear some people, the "rich getting richer" only happens when Republicans are in charge.