The so-called 1% in Canada are capturing a smaller share of total income, according to new data on taxpayers from Statistics Canada.

The national statistics agency said Tuesday the top 1% of taxfilers saw their share of total income fall to a six-year low in 2012. The top 1% accounted for 10.3% of total income during the year, down slightly from 10.6% in 2011, and well below the historical peak of 12.1% reached in 2006. The cutoff for being considered among the 1% rose to $215,700 in 2012, up from $212,700 in 2011.

StatsCan notes that this decline in income share for the 1% in Canada is in contrast to the United States, where the share for the top 1% increased from 18.0% in 2006 to 19.3% in 2012.

The income share for the top 5% of taxfilers in Canada also declined, from 25.1% in 2006 to 23.6% in 2012; and, the share of the top 10% fell from 36.1% to 34.9% during the same period. The threshold to be included in the top 5% was $112,100 and for the top 10% it was $86,700.

StatsCan says that the stretch between 2006 and 2012 marks the first prolonged period, since 1982, when the total income shares of the bottom 90%, 95% and 99% of Canadian taxfilers rose or stabilized.

Along with the apparent decline in income inequality, StatsCan also reports that the proportion of women in the top 1% reached a 31-year high in 2012. Of the 261,365 tax filers that comprise the top 1%, 21.3% were women, which is almost double the proportion in 1982.

Women’s share also doubled among the top 5% and the top 10% of taxfilers between 1982 and 2012, the agency reports. In 2012, women accounted for 25.2% of the top 5%, up from 12.0% in 1982. And, women’s share in the top 10% rose from 14.3% to 29.8% over that same period.

Notwithstanding the income trends at the national level, the picture is different within the provinces, StatsCan reports. It says that income shares for top earners rose in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island.

The data also shows an ongoing shift toward the West in terms of the geographic location of the 1%. While Ontario still has the largest proportion (41.5%) of the country’s top 1%, this share has been declining since its peak of 51.7% in 2000.

Alberta remains in second place, having passed Quebec in 2005. Back in 2000, just 12.7% of the top 1% lived in Alberta; in 2012, that share had increased to 22.8%. Over the same period, the share for Québec declined slightly from 17.2% to 16.6%.

British Columbia represented 10.7% of the top 1% in 2000, and this has grown slightly to 11.1% by 2012. StatsCan says that he two provinces with small, but increasing, shares of the top 1%, are Saskatchewan, which ranks fifth at 2.1%, and Newfoundland, whose share increased from 0.7% in 2005 to 1.0% in 2012, surpassing New Brunswick.

Manitoba, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all experienced declines in the proportion of top 1% taxfilers living in the province between 2000 and 2012, it says.