Councilman James Oddo, one of the few Republicans on City Council, thought Occupy Wall Street was unfair in their assessment of the top one percent.
And so, he requested data from the Independent Budget Office, to determine who exactly NYC's one percent is, and just how much they pay in taxes compared to the 99 percent.
The IBO sent Oddo the report and summarized:
The minimum income of a member of the so-called 1% in New York City is approximately $493,439 with an average income per filer of $2,247,515. To be a member of the top 10% in New York City requires a minimum income of $105,368.
The top 10% of city taxpayers (about 345,169 payers) accounts for 71.2% of the city personal income tax. The top 1%, or about 34,598 people, pays 43.2% of the total burden.
About 1.18 million filers pay no New York City personal income taxes at all, and some who live in poverty receive "refund" payments of the values of their earned income tax credit, child care and dependent care credit.
Oddo, of course, took the numbers as proof that the %1 pays their fair share.
"I think the numbers bear out the argument that we should not be attacking higher-income New Yorkers because their tax dollars fund, in large measure, all the services that New Yorkers have come to rely on," he said, according to The New York Daily News
The report (see full copy below) also gives credence, however, to Occupy Wall Street's cries of extreme income inequality.
Half of New York households are getting by on less than $28,000 a year.
And those 34,000 New Yorkers (there are nearly 8.4 million people living in NYC) that comprise the city's %1, collected more than one-third of all the income in New York City in 2009.
So for all those times you've been in a drunk argument over which of your friends is or isn't in the 1%, now you know.