Taxing The Wealthy, Poll | featured news

Six in 10 Americans support a tax increase on annual income of more than $250,000, according to a nationwide poll released Wednesday.

Americans support raising taxes on the rich by a two-to-one margin, with many believing an increase would both help the economy and make the tax system fairer, according to a Pew poll released Monday afternoon. Forty-four percent of adults surveyed said that raising taxes on incomes above $250,000 would help the economy and increase fairness, while 22 percent said it would hurt the economy and 21 percent that it would make the system less fair.

An Associated Press-GfK poll shows that President Barack Obama's proposal to make millionaires pay a significant share of their incomes in taxes is widely popular. But the plan is not shaking the public's embrace of spending cuts as the best way to balance the budget....

Less than a quarter of wealthy Americans support raising taxes on households making $250,000 or more a year, the level being targeted by President Barack Obama, though tax increases further up the income scale have broader support, said a poll released on Tuesday.

Most Americans oppose the big spending cuts that many in Washington see as necessary to bring down the budget deficit, a new poll suggests, but they do support one idea for deficit reduction that President Barack Obama has pushed for years — raising taxes on the rich.