NYT/CBS poll: 62% say their income tax level is fair; more than half of teabaggers agree

Just ahead of Tax Day, a new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that most Americans regard the income taxes that they will have to pay this year as fair, regardless of political partisanship, ideology or income level.

Sixty-two percent of all respondents in the poll said the income tax they have to pay is fair, while 30 percent called it unfair. That includes six in 10 Republicans and independents and just over two-thirds of Democrats – a display of cross-party agreement rarely seen on any topic. It also includes most liberals, moderates and conservatives.

Majorities across all income groups, moreover, called their income tax fair. Sixty-two percent of Americans in households earning $50,000 or less said so, as did the same percentage of people in households earning more.

Perhaps even more surprising, though, is that even among the 18 percent of Americans who say they support the Tea Party Movement, more than half call their own income tax fair. Sentiment toward the income tax turns more sour, however, among the smaller group of Tea party supporters who are active in the movement. Most of them, 55 percent, regard the income tax they have to pay as unfair. Thousands of Tea Party supporters gathered in Boston today for a rally near the original site of the Boston Tea Party.


The nationwide telephone poll was conducted April 5-12 with 1,580 adults. For the purposes of analysis, Tea Party supporters were oversampled, for a total of 881, and then weighted back to their proper proportion in the poll. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for both all adults and Tea Party supporters. Complete poll results and article will be available this evening at www.nytimes.com.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/poll-most-find-their-income-tax-fair/?hp