"The large percentage of people who don't owe federal income tax is a feature, not a bug, of the revenue code," write the Tax Policy Center's Philip Stallworth and Daniel Berger. "By design, the federal income tax always has excluded a significant fraction of households through a combination of personal exemptions, the standard deduction, zero bracket amounts, and more recently, tax credits." According to the Tax Policy Center's 2018 estimation, nearly 99 million Americans were expected to file a tax return in 2020. That figure may increase due to the pandemic, however, since people are being asked to file a tax return to claim unpaid stimulus checks, even if they aren't required to based on income.