Minnesota has more than 4,700 “millionaire earners,” according to a new Forbes magazine list that is based on data from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
 
The IRS data was recently released but is based on 2011 tax returns, Forbes said. To qualify for the top earning category, residents must have reported $1 million or more in adjusted gross income (AGI) on their 1040s, whether an individual or joint return.
 
According to Forbes, there were 304,118 “millionaire earners” across the United States based on the 2011 data. Minnesota had the 18th-most of those earners among states.
 
Forbes also went on to determine the concentration of millionaire earners, by noting the number of $1 million-plus tax returns as a percentage of the total tax returns filed within each respective state.
 
A total of 4,747 Minnesotans’ returns reported $1 million-plus AGIs in 2011. That number represents 0.18 percent of all returns (2,601,604) filed in the state. Data from 2010 tax returns (the year prior to the IRS’ most recent data) indicated that 4,564 Minnesotans earned $1 million or more (0.17 percent). In other words, there were 183 more “millionaire earners” in 2011 than in 2010.

 
States with the most millionaire earners included California (45,109 such returns, or 0.26 percent of all returns filed), New York (38,240; 0.41 percent), Texas (27,347; 0.24 percent), Florida (20,921; 0.22 percent), and Illinois (14,692; 0.24 percent).
 
Meanwhile, states with the fewest millionaire earners included Vermont (340 returns; 0.11 percent), Montana (485; 0.10 percent), Alaska (544; 0.15 percent), Maine (562; 0.09 percent), and Hawaii (623; 0.09 percent).
 
Click here to view the complete list of states broken out by residents' 2011 tax returns.
 
In some previous years, IRS data looked at earners making more than $200,000, rather than $1 million. Click here to see past years’ data.
 
In September, five Minnesotans made Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest men and women in the nation, based on their net worth.