Top after tax incomes

The purpose of this article is to present some data on top after-tax incomes in New Zealand. Thus it is a companion to the preceding article in this Policy Quarterly, ‘Distribution of pre-tax top personal incomes’, which looked at before-tax incomes. That article found that there had been little change after 1981 in the market (before-tax) income shares of those on top incomes. This article reports that, nevertheless, those on top incomes had dramatic increases in their after-tax incomes and shares of total after-tax income in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since there was no change in pre-tax market income shares, these increases were due to changes in relative tax rates.