On the front page’s Midday open thread, there is a small article on Trump’s “pass-through” tax cut. It pointed out that it would just benefit wealthy Americans. What’s largely unknown is that there has been polling conducted on this very issue.
In a poll conducted by the Program for Public Consultation, respondents were asked to answer a variety of questions about the US budget. Americans were presented standard facts about the budget, including some historical trends, offered general arguments for and against reducing or increasing spending and/or taxes, and then allowed to alter both. Respondents were first allowed to offer their own recommendations for spending on 31 separate items of the discretionary budget, and then on taxes, they were allowed to raise or lower individual taxes, tax changes that have been offered by the Trump administration, as well as proposals with support from other advocates.
This was all presented within the context of the current budget deficit, which raised or lowered depending on the choices respondents made.
In this blog post, I t talk about the changes made to spending. Instead, I’ll focus on the changes to taxes they did make. Keep in mind, the things I’ m about to say were supported by a majority of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.
First, let’s talk about the topic at hand. Large majorities of Americans oppose Trump’s pass-through entities tax cut (Q32b on the linked questionnaire), including 62% of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 70% of Democrats.
But, that’s not all the tax cut’s that have bipartisan opposition. On the estate tax, though Democrats supported raising it (65%, 48% of Independents), Republicans didn’t support lowering. In fact, only 36% of Republicans favored lowering the estate tax while an equal percentage of Republicans favored raising it (37%). So, at a minimum, a large majority of Americans favored either raising it or keeping it the same.
A majority of Americans (63%) also favored raising taxes on capital gains and dividends (74% of Democrats, 49% of Republicans and 63% of Independents), while only minorities of Americans supported lowering them (10% of Democrats, 21% of Republicans). The public also opposes any tax cuts on individual taxes, with 51% of Republicans supporting a 5% increase in taxes for those earning $200,000 or more, as did 69% of Independents and 73% of Democrats. Both Democrats and Independents were willing to go much further, raising taxes 5% on those earning $100,000 or more, and by 10% on the those earning $1 Million or more.
So, this notion that there is this great wellspring of support among Republicans for tax cuts is not supported by the evidence when Americans are confronted with a budget that presents real world trade-offs. The report for this large poll can be found here.