Thursday, September 23, 2010
sales taxes
in addition to income tax evaluation, i am also interested in the public's view of increasing the sales tax to generate more revenue and possibly decreasing income tax burden. suppose an increase tax was imposed on milk or other staples. this would affect anyone who shops at the grocery store. this is considered a 'blanket tax' because it affects virtually every consumer. a tax increase on items like alcohol and tobacco would most likely effect lower-income americans, while a tax on inheritance will most likely effect higher-income americans.
Friday, September 17, 2010
nonattitudes and insincerity
Non-attitudes in taxation:
I couldn't imagine that the public would have no opinion on their taxation, since it affects their money, an issue that is most commonly determined to be the most important issue in polling.
Insincerity:
Reasonable people would vote for less tax burden on their own income level, but many people might misrepresent their income as a result of Social Desirability Response Bias, which is "inaccurate polling results due to respondents giving answers that make them seem 'socially desirable' but not true." Many respondents might over-report their income to pollsters to make themselves feel better about their financial situation. By doing so, the poll results will be skewed. As a pollster, it is important to know respondents income levels when talking about taxation because tax rates are so dynamic across income levels.
A person earning $60,000 may report $100,000 and answer that people in the $60,000 bracket should carry less tax burden. Answers like this example will suggest that upper-income Americans would like a lower tax rate for middle-income Americans. If insincerity is a factor, then the conclusions of the poll will be incorrect.
I couldn't imagine that the public would have no opinion on their taxation, since it affects their money, an issue that is most commonly determined to be the most important issue in polling.
Insincerity:
Reasonable people would vote for less tax burden on their own income level, but many people might misrepresent their income as a result of Social Desirability Response Bias, which is "inaccurate polling results due to respondents giving answers that make them seem 'socially desirable' but not true." Many respondents might over-report their income to pollsters to make themselves feel better about their financial situation. By doing so, the poll results will be skewed. As a pollster, it is important to know respondents income levels when talking about taxation because tax rates are so dynamic across income levels.
A person earning $60,000 may report $100,000 and answer that people in the $60,000 bracket should carry less tax burden. Answers like this example will suggest that upper-income Americans would like a lower tax rate for middle-income Americans. If insincerity is a factor, then the conclusions of the poll will be incorrect.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
taxation. more progressive or regressive?
I have 3 articles from Gallup that suggest the public's opinions on taxation are mixed. On one hand, the majority of people polled believe that the wealthy should be taxed to help maintain social security. Another article finds that 41% (less than half) believe that low-income earners are paying their share of taxes. This figure is up from 32% last year. And another article finds that less than half of people polled believed their income taxes were too high.
All of this tells me that the population wants the wealthy to pay more in their tax code because it would help save many programs that we all rely on. Yet, middle and low income earners are also viewed as under-taxed. According to these 3 articles, it seems that the public's view on taxes is that they are too low and we need a more regressive tax system.
2 of 381 DOCUMENTS
Gallup Poll News Service
July 29, 2010 Thursday
Americans Look to Wealthy to Help Save Social Security;
Favor expanding Social Security taxes, limiting benefits for high-income Americans
BYLINE: by Jeffrey M. Jones
LENGTH: 957 words
DATELINE: PRINCETON, NJ
HIGHLIGHT: Americans are most likely to endorse proposals targeting the wealthy as ways of addressing concerns with the Social Security system, including requiring higher-income Americans to pay Social Security taxes on all of their earnings (67%) and limiting the benefits wealthy retirees receive (63%).
Of six possible ways to address concerns with the Social Security system in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, a majority of Americans favor two, both of which would affect only wealthy Americans. Less than a majority favor proposals that would involve increasing taxes, reducing benefits, or increasing the eligibility age for larger segments of the general public.
The July 8-11 USA Today/Gallup poll testing these ways to fix Social Security found growing doubts among both re-tired and nonretired Americans about the future of their own Social Security benefits. The poll also found the highest percentage of Americans in a Gallup survey to date saying the Social Security system is "in a state of crisis" or has "major problems."
The lack of support for most proposals to address problems with the Social Security system underscores the difficulty U.S. lawmakers will have in reforming it. Even the Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are them-selves divided on some of these, such as whether to raise the age at which people could receive full Social Security re-tirement benefits. Sixty-three percent of Americans believe this approach is a bad idea, making it (along with increasing Social Security taxes on all workers) the least popular of the six proposals tested in the poll.
Americans' opinions on various ways to ensure the future of Social Security have not changed much since 2005, when President Bush sought unsuccessfully to modify the system. At that time, as now, the proposals aimed at the wealthy were the only ones to garner majority support. Over the past five years, the only idea to receive a significant uptick in support is reducing retirement benefits for people currently under age 55, though still well less than a majority think this is a good idea.
There is general consensus on the Social Security proposals by age -- those that would primarily affect high-income Americans are the most popular among both young and old. The only notable difference by age concerns the idea of increasing the age at which people are eligible to receive full retirement benefits, which is endorsed by 50% of senior citizens but only 31% of all those under age 65. (For the full results by age, see page 2.)
Political differences exist on some, but not all, of the proposals. Democrats are more likely than independents and Re-publicans to favor the proposals affecting upper-income Americans, and increasing Social Security taxes on all workers. Still, a majority of Republicans favor the proposals that would target wealthier Americans, and less than a majority of Democrats think raising Social Security taxes on all workers is a good idea.
Bottom Line
The future health of the U.S. Social Security system is likely to be a topic of increasing discussion in the next few weeks as Americans acknowledge the 75th anniversary of its signing into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Obama's deficit commission may consider changes to Social Security and other entitlement programs as ways to reduce the federal budget deficit. Americans recognize the future of the Social Security system is in some peril but find few methods for attempting to fix it to their liking, other than those aimed at wealthy Americans.
Survey Methods
Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted July 8-11, 2010, with a random sample of 1,020 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cel-lular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only). Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, education, region, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2009 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in continental U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
View methodology, full question results, and trend data.
For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit http://www.gallup.com/.
Copyright © 2010 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, A8 , Business Impact Analysis , CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder theme names, Customer Engagement Index , Drop Club®, Emotional Economy , Employee Engagement Index , Employee Outlook Index , Follow This Path , Gallup Brain®, Gallup Con-sulting®, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup Press®, Gallup Publishing , Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup University®, HumanSigma®, I10 , L3 , PrincipalInsight , Q12®, SE25 , SF34®, SRI®, Strengths Spotlight , Strengths-Based Selling , StrengthsCoach , StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuest , TeacherInsight , The Gallup Path®, The Gallup Poll®, and Wellbeing Finder are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their re-spective owners. These materials are provided for noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without the express permission of Gallup, Inc.
LOAD-DATE: August 3, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2010 The Gallup Organization
All Rights Reserved
12 of 58 DOCUMENTS
Gallup Poll News Service
April 15, 2009 Wednesday
More Say Low-Income Americans Paying Fair Share of Taxes;
No change in perceptions of taxes paid by middle-income Americans
BYLINE: by Jeffrey M. Jones
LENGTH: 972 words
DATELINE: PRINCETON, NJ
HIGHLIGHT: A new Gallup Poll finds 41% of Americans saying lower-income people are paying their fair share of taxes, up from 32% last year and the highest since 1994. There has been no change in opinions of the taxes paid by middle-income people, while slightly fewer now say upper-income people are paying too little tax.
Americans' perceptions of the taxes paid by those with lower incomes have shifted in the past year. Now, 41% say low-er-income people are paying their "fair share" of federal taxes, up from 32% last year. At the same time, the percentage who believe lower-income Americans are paying "too much" in taxes has dropped from 51% to 39%.
This marks a new low in perceptions that lower-income people are paying too much in taxes going back to 1992, when Gallup first asked the question. The percentage saying lower-income people pay their fair share is the highest since 1994.
The changes may reflect a response to Barack Obama's plans for federal income taxes. Obama has promised to cut taxes for low- and middle-income Americans, while raising taxes only on the wealthiest Americans. Most working Americans have already begun to receive a tax cut through lower withholding amounts in their paychecks -- a provision in the recently passed economic stimulus package.
Americans are still most likely to say that middle-income people pay their fair share of taxes, as they have in six of the last seven years. Now, 50% hold this view. Meanwhile, just 23% say upper-income taxpayers pay their fair share, while 60% say they pay too little.
There has been virtually no change in Americans' perceptions of middle-income taxpayers' contributions over the past year. But the 50% who say they are paying their fair share remains on the high end of what Gallup has found historically. Prior to 2003 and the income-tax cuts enacted under George W. Bush, Americans were more likely to say middle-income Americans paid too much in taxes.
Americans have consistently said that upper-income people pay too little in taxes. But with Obama promising to in-crease taxes on those earning $250,000 or more per year to help pay for his domestic policy agenda, the percentage of Americans who hold this view has dipped slightly to 60%, the lowest percentage Gallup has found to date. There has been a slight bump up in the percentage who now say upper-income people pay too much, to a new high of 13%.
Income and Party Differences in Perceptions of Taxes Paid
The Internal Revenue Service building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 13th, 2009. (Gallup/Justin Rodermond)
Americans' views of the taxes paid by middle-income people are similar regardless of their own income situation -- roughly half of each income group thinks middle-class Americans pay their fair share in taxes. There is also much con-sensus that upper-income Americans pay too little in taxes, but those with annual household incomes of $75,000 or greater are somewhat less likely to say this.
The greatest variation by household income is observed in perceptions of the taxes lower-income people pay. Half of those in the lowest income bracket think lower-income people pay too much in taxes, while a slim majority of those in the highest income bracket believe lower-income people are paying their fair share. Americans in the middle-income bracket are about equally divided in their views as to whether lower-income people pay their fair share or too much taxes.
The greatest partisan differences, on the other hand, are seen in perceptions of the taxes upper-income Americans pay. Democrats (79%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans (38%) to say upper-income people pay too little taxes. As many Republicans say upper-income people pay their fair share of taxes as say they pay too little.
Additionally, most Democrats say lower-income people pay too much in taxes, but the greatest number of independents and Republicans say they pay their fair share.
As was the case with income, there are virtually no partisan differences in views of the taxes middle-income people pay.
Implications
Obama promised to take an economic approach different from Bush's, in hopes of reviving the economy. And while Obama has only begun to fulfill his promises of cutting taxes for the middle class and raising taxes on those earning $250,000 or more, Americans' views about the taxes different income groups pay have already shifted.
By this time next year, Obama's first budget will be in effect and he will have begun to implement his tax policy, and Americans' opinions on the fairness of taxes that different income groups pay may change further.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,027 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted April 6-9, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Copyright © 2009 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, A8 , Business Impact Analysis , CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder theme names, Customer Engagement Index , Drop Club®, Emotional Economy , Employee Engagement Index , Employee Outlook Index , Follow This Path , Gallup Brain®, Gallup Con-sulting®, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup Press®, Gallup Publishing , Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup University®, HumanSigma®, I10 , L3 , PrincipalInsight , Q12®, SE25 , SF34®, SRI®, Strengths Spotlight , Strengths-Based Selling , StrengthsCoach , StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuest , TeacherInsight , The Gallup Path®, and The Gallup Poll® are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. These materials are provided for noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without the express permission of Gallup, Inc.
LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2009
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2009 The Gallup Organization
All Rights Reserved
1 of 58 DOCUMENTS
Gallup Poll News Service
April 14, 2010 Wednesday
Americans Split on Whether Their Income Taxes Are Too High;
Views since Bush tax cuts were implemented continue to be more positive
BYLINE: by Frank Newport
LENGTH: 636 words
DATELINE: PRINCETON, NJ
HIGHLIGHT: For the second straight year, slightly less than half of Americans say the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is too high, while almost as many say the amount they pay in taxes is about right.
For the second straight year, slightly less than half of Americans say the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is too high, while almost as many say the amount they pay in taxes is about right.
Gallup has been asking Americans about taxes in this format since 1956. For most of this time, the majority of Americans have viewed their taxes as too high. This includes the 69% who felt this way in 1969, marking the highest "too high" percentage on record. As recently as 1999, 68% of Americans told Gallup their taxes were too high.
A big shift in these views came about in the last eight years, coincident with the implementation of the George W. Bush administration tax cuts. The "too high" percentage in Gallup's polling fell from 65% in April 2001 to 47% in January 2003 -- after the first Bush tax cuts became law.
Americans' views on taxes have fluctuated modestly since then, rising slightly to 53% "too high" in 2007, before dropping to 46% last year and 48% this year. Last year's percentage tied a reading from 1961 -- shortly after John F. Kennedy had been inaugurated as president -- for the lowest in Gallup history.
Throughout Gallup's history of asking this question, no more than 3% of Americans have ever said they pay "too little" in taxes.
There is not a great deal of differentiation in response to the tax question across major income groups.
Forty-eight percent of Americans in the $75,000 and higher income group say their taxes are too high, exactly the same as the overall average. This is only marginally different from those in lower income categories. (Sample-size considerations dictate that the top income group Gallup uses for its basic surveys is $75,000 and up. It is possible that the small numbers of Americans in higher income groups, in particular those making $250,000 and up, would be more likely to complain that their taxes are too high.)
Republicans, who have generally been identified as favoring deeper tax cuts, are in fact most likely in the current survey to say their taxes are too high, albeit at a level (54%) that is only marginally above the overall average. Democrats are significantly less likely to say their taxes are too high, although 6% say the amount they pay in taxes is too low.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,020 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted April 8-11, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Copyright © 2010 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, A8 , Business Impact Analysis , CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder theme names, Customer Engagement Index , Drop Club®, Emotional Economy , Employee Engagement Index , Employee Outlook Index , Follow This Path , Gallup Brain®, Gallup Consulting®, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup Press®, Gallup Publishing , Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup University®, HumanSigma®, I10 , L3 , PrincipalInsight , Q12®, SE25 , SF34®, SRI®, Strengths Spotlight , Strengths-Based Selling , StrengthsCoach , StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuest , TeacherInsight , The Gallup Path®, The Gallup Poll®, and Wellbeing Finder are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. These materials are provided for noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without the express permission of Gallup, Inc.
LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2010 The Gallup Organization
All Rights Reserved
All of this tells me that the population wants the wealthy to pay more in their tax code because it would help save many programs that we all rely on. Yet, middle and low income earners are also viewed as under-taxed. According to these 3 articles, it seems that the public's view on taxes is that they are too low and we need a more regressive tax system.
2 of 381 DOCUMENTS
Gallup Poll News Service
July 29, 2010 Thursday
Americans Look to Wealthy to Help Save Social Security;
Favor expanding Social Security taxes, limiting benefits for high-income Americans
BYLINE: by Jeffrey M. Jones
LENGTH: 957 words
DATELINE: PRINCETON, NJ
HIGHLIGHT: Americans are most likely to endorse proposals targeting the wealthy as ways of addressing concerns with the Social Security system, including requiring higher-income Americans to pay Social Security taxes on all of their earnings (67%) and limiting the benefits wealthy retirees receive (63%).
Of six possible ways to address concerns with the Social Security system in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll, a majority of Americans favor two, both of which would affect only wealthy Americans. Less than a majority favor proposals that would involve increasing taxes, reducing benefits, or increasing the eligibility age for larger segments of the general public.
The July 8-11 USA Today/Gallup poll testing these ways to fix Social Security found growing doubts among both re-tired and nonretired Americans about the future of their own Social Security benefits. The poll also found the highest percentage of Americans in a Gallup survey to date saying the Social Security system is "in a state of crisis" or has "major problems."
The lack of support for most proposals to address problems with the Social Security system underscores the difficulty U.S. lawmakers will have in reforming it. Even the Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives are them-selves divided on some of these, such as whether to raise the age at which people could receive full Social Security re-tirement benefits. Sixty-three percent of Americans believe this approach is a bad idea, making it (along with increasing Social Security taxes on all workers) the least popular of the six proposals tested in the poll.
Americans' opinions on various ways to ensure the future of Social Security have not changed much since 2005, when President Bush sought unsuccessfully to modify the system. At that time, as now, the proposals aimed at the wealthy were the only ones to garner majority support. Over the past five years, the only idea to receive a significant uptick in support is reducing retirement benefits for people currently under age 55, though still well less than a majority think this is a good idea.
There is general consensus on the Social Security proposals by age -- those that would primarily affect high-income Americans are the most popular among both young and old. The only notable difference by age concerns the idea of increasing the age at which people are eligible to receive full retirement benefits, which is endorsed by 50% of senior citizens but only 31% of all those under age 65. (For the full results by age, see page 2.)
Political differences exist on some, but not all, of the proposals. Democrats are more likely than independents and Re-publicans to favor the proposals affecting upper-income Americans, and increasing Social Security taxes on all workers. Still, a majority of Republicans favor the proposals that would target wealthier Americans, and less than a majority of Democrats think raising Social Security taxes on all workers is a good idea.
Bottom Line
The future health of the U.S. Social Security system is likely to be a topic of increasing discussion in the next few weeks as Americans acknowledge the 75th anniversary of its signing into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. President Obama's deficit commission may consider changes to Social Security and other entitlement programs as ways to reduce the federal budget deficit. Americans recognize the future of the Social Security system is in some peril but find few methods for attempting to fix it to their liking, other than those aimed at wealthy Americans.
Survey Methods
Results for this USA Today/Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted July 8-11, 2010, with a random sample of 1,020 adults, aged 18 and older, living in the continental U.S., selected using random-digit-dial sampling.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cel-lular phones (for respondents who are cell phone-only). Each sample includes a minimum quota of 150 cell phone-only respondents and 850 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents for gender within region. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, education, region, and phone lines. Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2009 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older non-institutionalized population living in continental U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
View methodology, full question results, and trend data.
For more details on Gallup's polling methodology, visit http://www.gallup.com/.
Copyright © 2010 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, A8 , Business Impact Analysis , CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder theme names, Customer Engagement Index , Drop Club®, Emotional Economy , Employee Engagement Index , Employee Outlook Index , Follow This Path , Gallup Brain®, Gallup Con-sulting®, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup Press®, Gallup Publishing , Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup University®, HumanSigma®, I10 , L3 , PrincipalInsight , Q12®, SE25 , SF34®, SRI®, Strengths Spotlight , Strengths-Based Selling , StrengthsCoach , StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuest , TeacherInsight , The Gallup Path®, The Gallup Poll®, and Wellbeing Finder are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their re-spective owners. These materials are provided for noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without the express permission of Gallup, Inc.
LOAD-DATE: August 3, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2010 The Gallup Organization
All Rights Reserved
12 of 58 DOCUMENTS
Gallup Poll News Service
April 15, 2009 Wednesday
More Say Low-Income Americans Paying Fair Share of Taxes;
No change in perceptions of taxes paid by middle-income Americans
BYLINE: by Jeffrey M. Jones
LENGTH: 972 words
DATELINE: PRINCETON, NJ
HIGHLIGHT: A new Gallup Poll finds 41% of Americans saying lower-income people are paying their fair share of taxes, up from 32% last year and the highest since 1994. There has been no change in opinions of the taxes paid by middle-income people, while slightly fewer now say upper-income people are paying too little tax.
Americans' perceptions of the taxes paid by those with lower incomes have shifted in the past year. Now, 41% say low-er-income people are paying their "fair share" of federal taxes, up from 32% last year. At the same time, the percentage who believe lower-income Americans are paying "too much" in taxes has dropped from 51% to 39%.
This marks a new low in perceptions that lower-income people are paying too much in taxes going back to 1992, when Gallup first asked the question. The percentage saying lower-income people pay their fair share is the highest since 1994.
The changes may reflect a response to Barack Obama's plans for federal income taxes. Obama has promised to cut taxes for low- and middle-income Americans, while raising taxes only on the wealthiest Americans. Most working Americans have already begun to receive a tax cut through lower withholding amounts in their paychecks -- a provision in the recently passed economic stimulus package.
Americans are still most likely to say that middle-income people pay their fair share of taxes, as they have in six of the last seven years. Now, 50% hold this view. Meanwhile, just 23% say upper-income taxpayers pay their fair share, while 60% say they pay too little.
There has been virtually no change in Americans' perceptions of middle-income taxpayers' contributions over the past year. But the 50% who say they are paying their fair share remains on the high end of what Gallup has found historically. Prior to 2003 and the income-tax cuts enacted under George W. Bush, Americans were more likely to say middle-income Americans paid too much in taxes.
Americans have consistently said that upper-income people pay too little in taxes. But with Obama promising to in-crease taxes on those earning $250,000 or more per year to help pay for his domestic policy agenda, the percentage of Americans who hold this view has dipped slightly to 60%, the lowest percentage Gallup has found to date. There has been a slight bump up in the percentage who now say upper-income people pay too much, to a new high of 13%.
Income and Party Differences in Perceptions of Taxes Paid
The Internal Revenue Service building on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 13th, 2009. (Gallup/Justin Rodermond)
Americans' views of the taxes paid by middle-income people are similar regardless of their own income situation -- roughly half of each income group thinks middle-class Americans pay their fair share in taxes. There is also much con-sensus that upper-income Americans pay too little in taxes, but those with annual household incomes of $75,000 or greater are somewhat less likely to say this.
The greatest variation by household income is observed in perceptions of the taxes lower-income people pay. Half of those in the lowest income bracket think lower-income people pay too much in taxes, while a slim majority of those in the highest income bracket believe lower-income people are paying their fair share. Americans in the middle-income bracket are about equally divided in their views as to whether lower-income people pay their fair share or too much taxes.
The greatest partisan differences, on the other hand, are seen in perceptions of the taxes upper-income Americans pay. Democrats (79%) are more than twice as likely as Republicans (38%) to say upper-income people pay too little taxes. As many Republicans say upper-income people pay their fair share of taxes as say they pay too little.
Additionally, most Democrats say lower-income people pay too much in taxes, but the greatest number of independents and Republicans say they pay their fair share.
As was the case with income, there are virtually no partisan differences in views of the taxes middle-income people pay.
Implications
Obama promised to take an economic approach different from Bush's, in hopes of reviving the economy. And while Obama has only begun to fulfill his promises of cutting taxes for the middle class and raising taxes on those earning $250,000 or more, Americans' views about the taxes different income groups pay have already shifted.
By this time next year, Obama's first budget will be in effect and he will have begun to implement his tax policy, and Americans' opinions on the fairness of taxes that different income groups pay may change further.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,027 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted April 6-9, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
Copyright © 2009 Gallup, Inc. All rights reserved. Gallup®, A8 , Business Impact Analysis , CE11®, Clifton StrengthsFinder®, the 34 Clifton StrengthsFinder theme names, Customer Engagement Index , Drop Club®, Emotional Economy , Employee Engagement Index , Employee Outlook Index , Follow This Path , Gallup Brain®, Gallup Con-sulting®, Gallup Management Journal®, GMJ®, Gallup Press®, Gallup Publishing , Gallup Tuesday Briefing®, Gallup University®, HumanSigma®, I10 , L3 , PrincipalInsight , Q12®, SE25 , SF34®, SRI®, Strengths Spotlight , Strengths-Based Selling , StrengthsCoach , StrengthsFinder®, StrengthsQuest , TeacherInsight , The Gallup Path®, and The Gallup Poll® are trademarks of Gallup, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. These materials are provided for noncommercial, personal use only. Reproduction prohibited without the express permission of Gallup, Inc.
LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2009
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2009 The Gallup Organization
All Rights Reserved
1 of 58 DOCUMENTS
Gallup Poll News Service
April 14, 2010 Wednesday
Americans Split on Whether Their Income Taxes Are Too High;
Views since Bush tax cuts were implemented continue to be more positive
BYLINE: by Frank Newport
LENGTH: 636 words
DATELINE: PRINCETON, NJ
HIGHLIGHT: For the second straight year, slightly less than half of Americans say the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is too high, while almost as many say the amount they pay in taxes is about right.
For the second straight year, slightly less than half of Americans say the amount of federal income tax they have to pay is too high, while almost as many say the amount they pay in taxes is about right.
Gallup has been asking Americans about taxes in this format since 1956. For most of this time, the majority of Americans have viewed their taxes as too high. This includes the 69% who felt this way in 1969, marking the highest "too high" percentage on record. As recently as 1999, 68% of Americans told Gallup their taxes were too high.
A big shift in these views came about in the last eight years, coincident with the implementation of the George W. Bush administration tax cuts. The "too high" percentage in Gallup's polling fell from 65% in April 2001 to 47% in January 2003 -- after the first Bush tax cuts became law.
Americans' views on taxes have fluctuated modestly since then, rising slightly to 53% "too high" in 2007, before dropping to 46% last year and 48% this year. Last year's percentage tied a reading from 1961 -- shortly after John F. Kennedy had been inaugurated as president -- for the lowest in Gallup history.
Throughout Gallup's history of asking this question, no more than 3% of Americans have ever said they pay "too little" in taxes.
There is not a great deal of differentiation in response to the tax question across major income groups.
Forty-eight percent of Americans in the $75,000 and higher income group say their taxes are too high, exactly the same as the overall average. This is only marginally different from those in lower income categories. (Sample-size considerations dictate that the top income group Gallup uses for its basic surveys is $75,000 and up. It is possible that the small numbers of Americans in higher income groups, in particular those making $250,000 and up, would be more likely to complain that their taxes are too high.)
Republicans, who have generally been identified as favoring deeper tax cuts, are in fact most likely in the current survey to say their taxes are too high, albeit at a level (54%) that is only marginally above the overall average. Democrats are significantly less likely to say their taxes are too high, although 6% say the amount they pay in taxes is too low.
Survey Methods
Results are based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,020 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted April 8-11, 2010. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
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LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2010
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Web Publication
Copyright 2010 The Gallup Organization
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