美国国家公共电台 NPR We Asked People What They Know About Taxes. See If You Know The Answers

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Tomorrow is the deadline for filing your taxes. And this year, NPR wanted to find out how much people actually know about the tax system. We partnered with the Ipsos polling company and asked a set of questions about things like who is taxed and how much. And we found out there is a lot of misinformation out there.

To clear some of this up, we're joined by NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben as well as Chris Jackson of Ipsos. They both worked on this poll. Hi to both of you.

CHRIS JACKSON: Good afternoon.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE 1: Hello.

MCEVERS: So, Chris, tell us quickly who was polled here.

JACKSON: This was a survey of 1,010 American adults. That is people age 18 and older, means they can pay taxes. And it is meant to be a representative survey of the American people.

MCEVERS: And, Danielle, what struck you in the survey?

KURTZLEBEN: Well, like you said in the introduction there, people do have some misconceptions about the U.S. tax code. And one big misconception that struck me was about the share of Americans who pay zero or negative income taxes.

Now, right now, around 45 percent of U.S. households pay zero or negative federal income taxes. Now, this survey showed that Americans think that number is a lot lower. A lot of people guessed 11 percent. A lot of others guessed 27 percent, so much lower than 45.

MCEVERS: Who are the people in that 45 percent who aren't paying federal income tax?

KURTZLEBEN: Right, that's a good question. And it is a mix of people, right? I mean, you have some people who are retirees. You know, they're not working, so they're not taking in enough money to really pay, you know, income taxes. But you also have the working poor.

These are people who are, you know, earning a paycheck, meaning a lot of these people are paying other taxes - a payroll 2 tax, sales tax, et cetera, whatever taxes might apply to them. But those working poor, they are helped by things like the Earned Income Tax Credit. After tax season every year, a lot of those people get money back. So that's where the negative income taxes come in.

MCEVERS: And, Chris, how about people on the other end of the spectrum 3? What did this survey tell us about how much Americans think that the wealthy should pay?

JACKSON: Well, Americans think that the wealthy should be paying more to have a simple answer. But it's a little more complicated than that because people see themselves as paying too much income taxes. Doesn't really matter what level you are, you feel like you're paying too much. It's only when you're thinking about someone who has more than you that you see that.

And the reality is when you're talking about millionaires, people who have more than a million dollars in household income, most people don't have that much money so most people are saying those people should be paying more in income taxes.

MCEVERS: There was also a question in your survey at how important a source of revenue personal income tax is to the federal government. What did you find there?

JACKSON: Yeah. The - a majority of Americans think that federal income taxes are important. They understand that taxes are important. They don't necessarily think things like we should cut taxes even if it causes the deficit 4 to go up. But the reality is people are sort of confused about what the tax code means. And that's one of the key takeaways, I think, from this study.

MCEVERS: And, Danielle, Congress is going to come back in two weeks. And there's some talk that they will look at changing the tax code. What could these survey results tell them?

KURTZLEBEN: So the big point here is that Americans are, first off, not ambivalent 5 at all of how the tax code. Americans think the tax code is too complicated. They think that they personally are paying too much in income tax. Which means if you are a lawmaker coming back to Washington in a couple of weeks, you can think to yourself pretty reliably, oh, the people in my district, there's probably a lot of them who really want the tax code changed, right?

But the question is what kind of changes those people want. Now, there are some pretty firmly-held partisan 6 views and pretty unsurprising, at that. For example, Democrats 7 were more likely to say that taxes should be raised on the very richest, Republicans a bit less so. Likewise, a majority of Americans said they think taxes are too high on the poorest. But once again, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that.

But there's one important point here. Views on the tax code are not necessarily partisan across the board. For example, a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents said that they think income from work should be taxed at a lower rate than income from wealth.

MCEVERS: And, Chris, any advice you could give to lawmakers who want to change the tax code?

JACKSON: Yeah. I think it's one of those things where, like Danielle said, it's easy to have a broad brush stroke and people will, generally speaking, be behind you. But it's one of those areas that it really depends on what you're saying.

Republicans will take the numbers that the majority thinks taxes should be lower for them. Democrats will take the number saying that they want the wealthy to pay more in taxes. And both are true. Both are real because Americans don't understand the tax code.

MCEVERS: That's Chris Jackson, vice 8 president of Ipsos Public Affairs and NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thanks to both of you.

JACKSON: Thank you.

KURTZLEBEN: Thank you.