Is the share of income of the top 1% in the United States high and rising? One...source is the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)...

The CBO's measure, "comprehensive income," ...assigns corporate profits to households...

How does the CBO get its results? By assumption. Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution notes that the CBO...does not actually look at who owns capital. If your tax return shows no income from capital, then, according to the CBO, you own no capital. Can the CBO spell IRA? A huge and growing portion of capital owners in the U.S. earns dividends, interest and capital gains that never show up on tax returns because it is tax-sheltered. And the middle class owns a much higher fraction of its wealth in tax-sheltered assets than does the top 1%...

The CBO has incorrectly added a huge and rising share of corporate profits to the estimated incomes of the top 1%. Without that, CBO estimates of the top 1%'s share of income would have fallen substantially since 1988. If there is evidence of increased inequality since then, the CBO has not presented it.