The income levels of the top 1% of taxpayers in the U.S. were up 7.2% in 2017, the most recent numbers available. New data from the Internal Revenue Service puts the entry mark at $515,371 per year.

That’s more than 10 times as high as the adjusted gross income of the benchmark to be part of the top 50% of taxpayers, who take home $41,740 or more. (That group pays 97% of taxes, according to the IRS.)

Even among the rich, there’s an upper echelon. For the 1%, that’s the top 0.1%. To reach that milestone in 2017, you’d have had to earn $2.4 million—a 38% increase since 2011, the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests, when “the 1%” became part of our national vocabulary.

Income inequality has been a topic frequently discussed by the Democratic presidential candidates this year, especially Bernie Sanders. Earlier this year, a paper authored by UC Berkeley economics professor Gabriel Zucman found that income inequality in the U.S. has reached levels last seen in the years just before the Great Depression.

美国最富有的1%的纳税人的收入水平在2017年上升了7.2%，这是现在可以查到的最新数据。美国国税局的新数据显示，这一群体的收入门槛为每年515,371美元。

这个数字比前50%的纳税人调整后的收入门槛的10倍还要多，后者的收入为41,740美元。（根据美国国税局的数据，97%的税是这些人缴纳的。）

即使在富人中，也有上层阶级。在那1%的人中，还有最顶端的0.1%。要在2017年跻身这0.1%，你必须赚到240万美元——比2011年增长了38% ，那一年是“占领华尔街”抗议活动的核心，那一年“那1%”成为美国大众词汇的一部分。

收入不平等是今年民主党总统候选人经常讨论的一个话题，尤其是伯尼·桑德斯。今年早些时候，加州大学伯克利分校的经济学教授加布里埃尔·祖克曼的一篇论文发现，美国的收入不平等已经达到大萧条开始之前那几年的水平。（财富中文网）

译者：Agatha