About two-thirds of Americans, 68 percent, say they paid the same or more in taxes for 2018 than the previous year, while less than a quarter said they paid less, according to a new Hill-HarrisX survey.
The survey results show individuals’ perceptions about their taxes for 2018, the first year of President Trump’s tax law. The survey was conducted in the days leading up to Monday, the deadline for taxes to be filed in most states.
Fully 36 percent of Americans in the poll said they paid the same amount in federal taxes last year than in 2017, while 32 percent said they paid more. Another 18 percent said they paid less.
The survey found that the more money individuals made, the more they tended to believe they paid in federal taxes. For example, 46 percent of respondents earning $125,000 or more a year said they owed more in 2018, compared to 33 percent of people making between $50,000 and $75,000 who said the same. Among those making $25,000 a year or less, 17 percent said they paid more to the government.
The highest percentage of those who said they paid less in taxes last year, 29 percent, made between $100,000 and 125,000. Meanwhile, more than half of those making over $250,000, 51 percent, said they paid more in taxes than the previous year.
HarrisX CEO Dritan Nesho said there could be some Americans who are doing their taxes on their own instead of hiring a professional, which could impact how they look at gains made from their taxes.
“You might actually have a little bit of an effect where people tried to do their own taxes, rather than hire a professional,” Nesho told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons. “They’re not realizing a lot of the returns or a lot of the gains that they could be realizing.”
The Hill-HarrisX survey was conducted April 12-13 among 1,001 registered voters. The sampling margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
— Julia Manchester
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