Hopefully by now you’ve filed and/or paid your federal incomes taxes. Today, after all, is the deadline. But if you did owe money to the federal government and find yourself grumbling about it, you wouldn’t be alone. A new Gallup study released this week shows that more than half of respondents -- 52 percent -- believe they pay “too much”:
Between the late 1960s and the late 1990s no less than 60 percent of Gallup respondents said federal income taxes were “too high.” But that all changed markedly around the turn of the century. In fact, between 1999 and 2002 the percentage of respondents who said their taxes were “too high” dropped some 18 percentage points. Why? According to the pollsters, the passage of the Bush tax cuts in 2001 -- and then again in 2003 -- had something to do with it.
Interestingly, too, when Gallup surveyed partisan groups, they found that Independents were more likely than Republicans to say Uncle Sam takes too much of their money:
Democrats are the only partisan group wherein more than half of respondents say the amount of money they pay in federal income taxes is “about right.” However, all groups seem to recognize that the IRS isn't underfunded, either.