[Retric]

70k is in the top ~16% so by your description they are net contributors to the tax base. https://graphics.wsj.com/what-percent/

The cutoff for top 40% is around 40k/year.

PS: Numbers are 5 years old but should be a good ballpark.

[wang_li]

According to google te median 2019 household income is $63k. And according to the CBO the median income of the middle quintile of households filing tax returns was $72k. That seems to disagree with your wsj link.

[Retric]

Households can contain multiple people filing separately. Did you mean only 40% of households or 40% of taxpayers?

Anyway, people getting Social Security should really mess with this calculation as someone could be making 150k, but up to 45k of that is from the government.