According to the ATO, the top 1% of income earners in Australia start at $237,300 but average $438,100.
How to Make the Top 1% List. To be in the top 1%, you must have an annual wage of at least $823,763, according to the Economic Policy Institute, That excludes sources of unearned income like investment returns.
For the youngest generation, $428,474 is needed to classify yourself as rich. That's more than six times greater than the median personal income of $52,338, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The average household gross income is $116,584, however the top 20% of households earn 48% of all income. Twelve times more than the bottom 20% who are left with just 4% of Australia's income.
All in all, only two percent of Australia's 14.3 million workers take over $200,000 a year. Only three percent of Australians earn $188,667. Prime Minister Scott Morrison earns $550,000 a year.
So if you're on $100k or more, congratulations, you're in the top 20% of Aussie income earners. If not, don't worry, you're in the good company of 80% of Aussies.
Wealthy Individuals within Australia are generally deemed to be those with net investible assets (NIA) over $1M (or net of over $2.5M including the family home) and earning more than $250,000 per annum. Having said this, the ATO categorise 'Wealthy Individuals' as those who control a net wealth of $5M or more.
A person on $200,000 a year would be earning more than double Australia's average, full-time salary of $90,917 a year.
A net-worth millionaire is someone who has a net worth of at least $1,000,000.
From the top 5% to the top 1%
Salaries start to jump significantly the closer you get to the top 1%. You'll start to see dramatic shifts in the top 5%, where the EPI found the average earners significantly increased to $343,000 in 2020, up from $324,000 the year before.
How much money do you need to be considered rich? According to Schwab's 2022 Modern Wealth Survey (opens in new tab), Americans believe it takes an average net worth of $2.2 million to qualify a person as being wealthy. (Net worth is the sum of your assets minus your liabilities.)
Ultra high net worth individuals: population of global 1 percent 2021, by country. Over 22 million individuals residing in the United States belonged to the global top one percent of ultra high net worth individuals worldwide in 2021. China ranked second, with over five million top one percent wealth holders globally.
On a mean wealth basis, Australia was the fourth-richest country in 2021 behind Switzerland, the US and Hong Kong. The average Australian adult was worth $US550,110 at the end of last year, after enjoying a $US66,350 annual increase in wealth.
According to a YouGov survey from January 2022, U.S. Americans believe that ten percent of households in their country have an annual income of more than $1 million.
Overall, less than 3 per cent of Australians feel wealthy despite the fact that more than 15 per cent of those surveyed earn more than $200,000 a year. However, most people surveyed felt “comfortable” on their current wage, with 55 per cent indicating this on a sliding scale when asked if they felt wealthy.
Saving for rent, the average Australian family of four spends around $4700 per month on basic living costs. For singles, it's around $1300 per month. Splitting expenses in a shared household is definitely the way to go if you're trying to keep costs down, whether that be with family or flatmates.
In 2020, about 10.1 million households in the United States had an income of 200,000 U.S. dollars or more a year.
At $200,000 a year, you are considered upper middle class in expensive coastal cities and rich in lower cost areas of the country. After $19,000 in retirement contributions to your 401(k), you are left with $181,000 in gross income, leaving you with roughly $126,700 in after tax income using a 30% effective tax rate.
It then goes on to describe those middle income Australians as individuals earning between $120,000 and $160,000 a year.
> Five classes can be identified in Australian society. > They are: 'established affluent', 'emergent affluent', 'mobile middle', 'established middle, and 'established working'.
There were 662,000 Australians — roughly 3 per cent of the population — in the top earning bracket of $3500 or more a week with salaries of more than $182,000 a year. Of those wealthy Aussies, 834 were people aged 15-19.
Commonwealth, Westpac, ANZ and National Australia Bank were all in the top 10, paying a combined $8.3 billion in tax. Woolworths won the supermarket wars in 2021, paying $636 million in tax off the back of higher revenue than rival Coles, which paid $445 million.
According to the IRS, a $400,000 or more annual household income represents America's top 1.8% income-earners.
Household wealth inequality
The study found that household wealth in Australia is very unequally divided. The highest 10 per cent of households by wealth has an average of $6.1 million or 46 per cent of all wealth. The next 30 per cent has an average of $1.7 million or 38 per cent.