The 47 Percent Here? Far Fewer Escape City\'s Income Tax

By SAM ROBERTS and PATRICK MCGEEHAN

In New York City, the “47 percent” is only 35 percent.

That's the share of city tax filers who, according to an analysis by the city's Independent Budget Office released Thursday, paid no city income tax in 2010 - as opposed to the 47 percent of Americans that Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, said depend on government handouts, pay no federal income taxes and will vote for President Obama.

Most of the 1.3 million New York households that filed returns but paid no tax - 67 percent of them - reported income below the threshold for owing city income tax. Another 28 percent of them would have owed taxes if they had not received tax credits. The remaining 5 percent reported negative income as a result of investment or business losses (their income, before losses, averaged $43,100).

Over all, the 35 percent of filers who did not pay city income tax reported an average income of $9,108.

Filers who owed taxes reported average income of about $100,000 (and paid an average of $2,925 in city tax).

Among those who did not pay, fully half said they had earned wages from full or part-time jobs, but not enough to make them liable for income tax.

“A significant share of these people are in the labor force and working, but they are not paying taxes because even though they are working, they didn't have a lot of income,” said George Sweeting, deputy director of the Independent Budget Office.