How many taxpayers pay Utah taxes?
This frequently posed question may sound very simple, but it is not. There are a lot of taxes and in one view everyone pays at least the sales tax and probably the fuel tax, as well as many tourists and shareholders. Since this book is about the income tax, we will limit the question to the income tax. Looking at table 1, line 1, in 2004 we had 990,317 returns filed with 910,271 being filed by full year residents (line 11). These figures do not tell the number of taxpayers but only the number of returns. If you have a traditional family with three kids, do you want to count five taxpayers, two taxpayers, counting only adults, or one for the family. Using table 1 again, it would be possible to count two for each married filing joint returns and one for the other returns. But all these returns do not pay taxes, since deductions, exemptions, or elderly tax exemptions may cause the income that is taxable to be so low no taxes are paid. On table 3 for full-year residents (the bottom part of
