Americans widely believe that they pay too much in taxes and do not get enough benefit later, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
The Monday poll found that roughly 66% of Americans say they pay "too much" on federal income taxes. Another 70% of respondents said the same thing about local property taxes, and 60% maintained the same opinion regarding state sales taxes.
Americans also reported a "high level of confidence" that the U.S. government was using their tax dollars to benefit "people like them," but they had a higher level of trust for local institutions.
"One of the things you’ll hear said is, ‘There’s no Democratic or Republican way to collect the trash or pave the streets,’" said Chris Berry, a University of Chicago professor who assisted with the poll. "We tend to think of local government as less partisan."
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Among political parties, Republicans were more likely to believe taxes were too high and that they got little value out of paying them.
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Nevertheless, Berry told The Associated Press that the poll shows a sweeping drop in public opinion regarding taxes and trust in government.
A contributing factor may be the opaque nature of taxes. Few respondents expressed confidence in knowing how their taxes are calculated, and just two in 10 said they knew how their property taxes are calculated.
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The AP poll surveyed 1,024 U.S. adults and was conducted Dec. 14-18, 2023 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
