Via TaxProf Blog, we learn that the IRS has released its annual report on Individual Income Tax Returns, 2012. Page 9 has statistics on Foreign Earned Income Exclusion usage, from which we can calculate the average amount of the FEIE per return:
| 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of returns w/FEIE | 371,885 | 396,405 | 415,519 | 445,276 | 475,386 |
| +6.59% | +4.82% | +7.16% | +6.76% | ||
| Total amount of excluded income (constant 1990 US$ million) |
13,899 | 14,907 | 15,482 | 16,305 | 16,866 |
| +7.25% | +3.86% | +5.31% | +3.44% | ||
| Average FEIE per return (constant 1990 US$) |
37,374 | 37,604 | 37,258 | 36,618 | 35,478 |
| +0.62% | -0.92% | -1.72% | -3.11% |
Here’s another way of looking at these numbers. Assume that all of the FEIE users in 2008 continued to be FEIE users in 2012 (or equivalently, that they were replaced by similar filers or married-filing-jointly couples), and that over that period they suffered the same drop of 0.96% in earned income (in constant 1990 US$) that all U.S. returns demonstrated on average during that period. What would the average FEIE for each of the one hundred thousand marginal new filers have to be in order to fit with the above figures?
Answer (again, in constant 1990 US$): US$29,709, almost exactly the same as the average earned income across all U.S tax returns.
