Inheritances are not taxable (for the recipient), but IRS data shows similar patterns. What it really comes down to is that the upper tail of the "reliable inc

Inheritances are not taxable (for the recipient), but IRS data shows similar patterns. What it really comes down to is that the upper tail of the "reliable income" distributions is thin enough that a large fraction of the people who end up in various "top N%" buckets are there due to various windfalls, lumpiness of income (e.g. a writer getting an advance that they live on for a few years while writing the book), etc, etc. Which is, by the way, why the way we do progressive taxation is a bit weird. Progressive taxation with tax brackets based on lifetime earnings, as opposed to current-year income, would make a lot more sense in some ways...