Wealthiest Pay Declining Share of Their Incomes in Taxes The richest Americans are paying a declining share of their incomes in taxes, even as their incomes grow more rapidly than everyone else's, according to data that the Internal Revenue Service gave a Republican member of Congress. The 1998 incomes, after taxes, of the top 1 percent of taxpayers increased at more than three times the rate of the bottom 90 percent, according to an analysis of this data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research organization in Washington that seeks to advance the interests of the poor. Over a longer period, from 1989 to 1998, the incomes of the richest 1 percent, adjusted for inflation, grew about eight times as fast. But the share of their income they paid in federal taxes in 1998 was at its lowest level since 1992, the year before Congress added two higher tax brackets that apply only to top earners. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/26/business/26RICH.html?pagewanted=all