August 26, 1999 | Read Time: 1 minute
Figuring out how residents of one state compare in generosity with those of another
ALSO SEE:
Residents of Utah Are the Most Generous of People Who Itemize
is a complicated task because comprehensive data are not available.
For its analysis, The Chronicle used data from the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income Bulletin for spring 1999.
The bulletin provides state-by-state totals of the number of taxpayers who filed returns with itemized deductions, the number of income-tax returns (with or without deductions), the adjusted gross income for all taxpayers, and the amount of charitable deductions. Each set of statistics is broken into seven income categories, ranging from taxpayers with less than $20,000 in income to those with $200,000 or more.
To calculate the percentage of itemizers’ income donated to charity, The Chronicle first divided the number of itemized returns by the total number of returns for each category in each state. That provided the percentage of itemized returns. Multiplying that percentage times the total adjusted gross income for each income category provided an estimate of total income for those who itemized deductions. That figure was then divided into the total amount of deductions to come up with a percentage given to charity.
Numerous tax experts caution against comparing states in which widely differing percentages of taxpayers itemize deductions on their returns. Therefore, the charts showing state-by-state rankings include only those states where at least 90 per cent of taxpayers in a given income category itemized their deductions.
