Taxes: What’s fair?
Do you believe the U.S. government should tax income from investments at the same rate as ordinary income, or should investment income be taxed at a lesser rate?
When we asked that question in our national scientific survey, here’s how Americans responded: 43% said investment income should be taxed as a rate less than ordinary income, 38% said investment income should be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income, and 19% expressed no opinion.
The issue is a hot topic in the wake of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s disclosure that his effective tax rate is 14% – far less than his GOP competitors and President Obama because all of Romney’s income comes from investments.
The U.S. government taxes investment earnings less than ordinary income in part because it wants to encourage and reward investments, which create jobs.
Most Republicans (63%) felt investment income should be taxed less than ordinary income.
Democrats disagreed, with 49% calling for investment income to be taxed at the same rate as ordinary income, with 23% dissenting.
Independents sided with Democrats by a 46%-38% margin.
Poll Position’s scientific telephone survey of 1,113 registered voters nationwide was conducted January 24, 2012 and has a margin of error of ±3%. Poll results are weighted to be a representative sampling of all American adults.
What do you think? Vote in our online companion poll and comment below.
The online companion poll in which you can vote provides unscientific results, meaning it’s a tally of participating Poll Position users, not a nationally representative sampling.
Poll Position is committed to transparency and upholding the highest professional standards in its polling, explaining why we provide you with the crosstabs of our scientific polls. Crosstabs provide a breakdown of survey participants by age, race, gender, and political affiliation. Here are the crosstabs for this poll: Poll Position crosstabs – taxes.
You can learn more about our polling methodology here.
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We shouldn’t punish working Americans for earning a salary at all. We need to tax consumption. Taxing income assumes we all have legitimate Social Security cards and numbers. Millions of people are either here illegally, or are paid cash under the radar of earned income. Taxing through consumption insures we all pay a fair share for taxpayer provided services.
Income is income. Investment income should be taxed the same as other income.