Poll: Taxpayers most worried about fairness

People in the U.S. are far more bothered that the corporations and the wealthiest don’t pay more in taxes than they are about the complexity of the tax code, according to a poll released this week.

{mosads}Roughly two-thirds of taxpayers polled by the Pew Research Center said they strongly believed that corporations didn’t paid their fair share in taxes. 

Around three in five said the same about the richest Americans. In all, around 80 percent of respondents said they were at least somewhat bothered by how much the wealthiest and corporations were paying. 

Pew Research Center polled 1,504 adults for the survey, which was conducted between Feb. 18 and 22. 

Fewer than half of those polled said they were really bothered by the complexity of the tax code, which former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) liked to say was “10 times the size of the Bible, with none of the good news.”

About one in five said they were really bothered by how much the poorest people paid in taxes, and almost three in 10 said the same about how much they pay.

Pew said the findings on those questions have been pretty consistent over the last four years or so. The findings underscore the challenges in overhauling the tax code. 

Both Democrats and Republicans say the tax code is too complex, but top officials in the GOP don’t believe that corporations and the highest earners are paying too much in taxes.