The 2017 Republican tax cut remains unpopular – the majority of Americans don’t think they got one at all.
By Paul Imison
As the annual IRS filing deadline of April 15 nears, just 17% of Americans believe their taxes will go down, a poll carried out by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal shows. Indeed, 28% believe they’ll pay more, another 27% expect to pay about the same, and 28% say they don’t know.
It perhaps gives some idea as to why the tax cut apparently made such little impact on November’s midterms as Democrats recaptured control of the House. Pew Research polling last month showed 36% of Americans expressing approval of the cuts, while 49% disapproved.
Eight-in-10 Americans stood to receive tax cuts in 2018, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) after Congress passed the law. Yet the cuts for most ordinary taxpayers are so small that many didn’t notice
The lowest earning 60% of households in the US stood to receive an average cut of less than $1,000, TPC analysis showed. Meanwhile, the top 1% could expect more than $51,000.
According to the the NBC/WSJ poll, the sense of disappointment is also nonpartisan. Just 33% of Republicans believe they’re getting a tax cut, while an even punier 10% of independents and 7% of Democrats do.
Factoring in age, gender, income groups, region, and ethnicity, 25% or fewer of respondents to the poll said they’re getting a tax cut. Republicans were the only group in which 30% or more believed they were getting a cut.
Among Trump’s base, 36% believed they were getting a tax cut. But another 36% said their taxes had stayed the same, while 6% said they’re actually paying more to the IRS.
