Capital Gains Tax Statistics (2026)

The US taxes capital gains, the profit from selling an asset for more than you paid, but at a lower rate than wages if you held long enough. In 2026 long-term gains (assets held more than a year) are taxed at 0%, 15%, or 20% depending on taxable income, and a 3.8% surtax lifts the top federal rate to 23.8%.

Short-term gains get no break: they are taxed as ordinary income, at rates up to 37%. That gap is the single most important number in the system, and it is why holding an investment past the one-year mark can meaningfully change your after-tax return.

The preferential rates apply in bands tied to taxable income. For 2026, a single filer pays 0% on long-term gains up to $49,450 of taxable income, 15% up to $545,500, and 20% above that; married couples filing jointly get a 0% band up to $98,900 and a 15% band up to $613,700 (see the table below).

Those thresholds rose with inflation. The joint 0% ceiling climbed from $96,700 in 2025 to $98,900 in 2026, letting couples shelter an extra $2,200 of gains at the 0% rate. Heads of household get a 0% band up to $66,200.

The holding period is what unlocks the low rate. Sell an asset a year or less after buying and the gain is short-term, taxed at your ordinary bracket of up to 37%; hold longer than a year and it becomes long-term, capped at 20% federally (see the table below).

For a top-bracket investor that is the difference between a 40.8% marginal rate (37% plus the 3.8% surtax) and 23.8%. The preference is deliberate policy, meant to reward longer holding periods and offset the fact that some of the gain is just inflation.

The headline 0/15/20 schedule is not the whole story. A 3.8% net investment income tax (NIIT) applies once modified AGI passes $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (joint), which is what turns the 20% top rate into 23.8% for high earners (see the table below).

Special assets carry their own rates: long-term gains on collectibles like art and gold coins can be taxed up to 28%, and depreciation recapture on real estate (unrecaptured Section 1250 gain) up to 25%. Qualified small business stock can, at the other extreme, qualify for a 0% rate.

Capital gains are a meaningful but modest slice of federal revenue. The tax raised roughly $261 billion in 2025 by the Tax Foundation's series; the Peterson Foundation frames 2025 revenue at about $270 billion, close to 0.9% of GDP and about 10% of all individual income tax receipts (see the chart and table below).

Over the past two decades capital gains have averaged about 9% of individual income tax revenue, or roughly 0.7% of GDP, per the Peterson Foundation. The two revenue estimates differ modestly because of accounting and timing conventions, but both land in the same neighborhood.

Realized gains swing wildly with markets because people choose when to sell. Realizations hit a record $2.07 trillion in 2021 amid a booming stock market, then dropped to $1.28 trillion in 2022 and just $943 billion in 2023 before recovering to about $1.45 trillion in 2025 (see the chart above). Revenue jumped 64% in 2021 and fell 49% from 2008 to 2009, per the Peterson Foundation, tracking the market rather than any rule change.

Scaled to the economy, the 2021 spike stands out sharply. CBO estimated realized gains reached about 8.7% of GDP in 2021, far above the norm, and projected them settling back toward 3.7% of GDP by 2033. That projection is from CBO's February 2023 baseline and is now dated, but the shape holds: realizations mean-revert toward roughly 3-5% of GDP after boom years.

Capital gains income is extraordinarily concentrated. The Tax Policy Center estimates the top 1% of tax units report about 75.4% of all long-term gains and the top 0.1% about 55.5%, while the top quintile accounts for roughly 92% (see the chart and table below).

Looked at by dollar income, taxpayers earning at least $1 million realized about 69% of all long-term gains in 2021, and those earning $10 million or more realized about 42%. The top 1% earn roughly 16.7% of total income but claim three-quarters of the gains.

For high earners, capital gains are not a side item, they are a large part of the paycheck. The Peterson Foundation reports that in 2023, taxpayers with AGI over $1 million reported an average of about $799,400 in capital gains, roughly 25% of their income.

Households under $100,000 in AGI, by contrast, reported an average of just $290 in gains, about 1% of their income. That difference is why the preferential rate is one of the most debated features of the tax code: its benefit flows overwhelmingly upward.

The statutory rate and the effective rate diverge. In the Tax Foundation series, tax paid divided by realized gains ranged from 14.7% in 2021 to 26.2% in 2022, a wide band driven by realization and payment timing rather than rate changes (see the table above).

Measured on an accrual basis the effective rate is far lower. One 2025 study estimated realized gains bore an effective rate of about 5.2% once deferral is counted, because unsold gains are never taxed until (and unless) they are realized (Equitable Growth).

The biggest reason gains go untaxed is the step-up in basis at death. When an owner dies, the cost basis of their assets resets to market value, so heirs pay no income tax on the appreciation that accrued during the owner's life.

The scale is enormous. The same 2025 study found that of about $116 trillion in accrued gains from 1954 to 2021, less than 20% was ever reported on tax returns, with roughly 80% escaping income tax largely through the step-up. Deferral plus step-up is why so much appreciation never faces the tax at all.

The composition of realized gains skews heavily toward securities. In 2015, the most recent detailed IRS breakdown cited by the Peterson Foundation, about 83% of gain-and-loss transactions involved stocks and mutual funds, though real estate and business interests dominate the largest gains.

Pass-through entities, partnerships and S corporations, accounted for about $349 billion of $686 billion in gains that year. Because these figures are a decade old, treat the exact split as indicative rather than current, but the tilt toward corporate equity is a durable feature.

Most states tax capital gains too, usually as ordinary income with no federal-style preference. California is the highest at 13.3%, so a top-bracket Californian faces roughly 37.1% all-in on long-term gains (20% federal + 3.8% NIIT + 13.3% state), versus 23.8% for a resident of Texas or Florida (see the table below).

Nine states levy no broad income tax, so investors there owe only the federal rate. Washington is a special case: it enacted a capital gains tax of 7% above about $278,000 and 9.9% above $1 million, exempting real estate and retirement accounts.

One large carve-out shields most home sales. Under Section 121, a single homeowner can exclude up to $250,000 of gain on a primary residence and a married couple up to $500,000, amounts unchanged since 1997 (NAR).

Because home prices have roughly tripled since then, the exclusion covers less than it used to. The National Association of Realtors estimates more than 13 million homeowners now hold gains above the exclusion, so a growing share of ordinary home sales can trigger capital gains tax.

The tax code rewards patience. Holding an investment more than a year drops the top federal rate from 40.8% to 23.8%, so the single biggest lever most investors control is simply the one-year holding period, plus using tax-advantaged accounts where gains grow untaxed.

Beyond that, the classic tools are tax-loss harvesting (offsetting gains with losses), placing high-turnover strategies inside IRAs and 401(k)s, and timing sales into years when your income, and thus your bracket, is lower. For a low-income year, some investors realize gains inside the 0% bracket deliberately.