March 28, 2024

Tax Overhaul Gains Public Support, Buoying Republicans

Over all, 51 percent of Americans approve of the tax law, while 46 percent disapprove, according to a poll for The New York Times conducted between Feb. 5 and Feb. 11 by SurveyMonkey. Approval has risen from 46 percent in January and 37 percent in December, when the law was passed.

A Warming Reception

Since the Republican tax plan became law in December, public opinion of it has improved, though few are expecting a tax cut this year.

Do you approve or disapprove of the tax plan?

Strongly/somewhat

approve

Strongly/somewhat

disapprove

90%

89%

REP.

80%

79%

57%

50%

TOTAL

45%

37%

19%

17%

DEM.

9%

8%

DEC.

JAN.

FEB.

DEC.

JAN.

FEB.

Do you, yourself, expect to get any of the

following as a result of the new tax law?

FEB. SURVEY

53%

REP.

Income

tax cut

33%

TOTAL

19%

DEM.

20%

Salary

increase

14%

9%

13%

Bonus or

increased

bonus

8%

4%

Notes: Party identifications include those who identify as “leaning” toward a particular party. Dec. data collected Dec. 11-13; Jan. data collected Jan. 1-5; Feb. data collected Feb. 5-11. | Source: SurveyMonkey | By The New York Times

“Public opinion is moving in the direction of this bill,” said Jon Cohen, chief research officer for SurveyMonkey. “Considering where it was, it is dramatically different.”

Mr. Cohen cautioned that the bill still was not particularly popular, and opposition among Democrats remained strong. Still, support has grown even among Democrats, from 8 percent just before the bill passed in December to 19 percent this month. For Democrats, Mr. Cohen said, running on opposition to the bill has become more of a political gamble.

“It’s less of a sure bet than it seemed in December,” he said. “This isn’t a problem yet for Democrats, but the movement isn’t a positive one.”

Other recent polls have shown similar upswings for the law, including a Monmouth University Poll in late January that found support for it had risen to 44 percent nationally, from 26 percent in December.

“I think we are essentially seeing Republicans ‘come home’ on the tax plan in our data,” said Lori Weigel, a partner with Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm. “That is certainly in part due to consistent communications about the tax plan and the news coverage of prominent companies investing in workers.”

Democrats have done little to counter the Republican messaging and concede it has had an effect, along with a series of high-profile company announcements of bonuses, raises or other benefits attributed to tax savings.

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But they are ramping up efforts to rebrand the law as disproportionately helping shareholders and the wealthy, and they contend the boost from bonus announcements will fade.

“There’s only so long you can push a one-time bonus,” said Nicole Gill, executive director of Tax March, a liberal group that has organized rallies and protests against the new law. “The fundamentals of the bill remain the same. The bill that passed is the bill that polled at 35 percent in December, and Democrats should keep talking about that.”

Photo
President Trump signing the tax bill in December. Support for the law — though not for Mr. Trump himself — is growing even among Democrats. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Times polling suggests that Americans are overestimating the degree to which the benefits of the law’s corporate tax cuts are flowing straight to workers — while underestimating the likelihood that the law will reduce their individual taxes.

Just under one in five respondents expect to see either a raise or a bonus thanks to the law’s business tax cuts. Early returns from public companies indicate that’s an overshot. Just Capital, a nonprofit research organization, analyzed the 90 largest public companies that have announced how they will spend the combined $45 billion in savings they stand to receive from the tax bill this year. It found that those companies planned to pass 6 percent of those savings directly on to workers, with more than half of that spending in one-time bonuses.

“That does not really track to how the public thinks the companies should be spending that money,” said Martin Whittaker, Just Capital’s chief executive.

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Only one in three respondents expects to receive a tax cut from the law. The independent Tax Policy Center in Washington estimates that four in five Americans will actually see a tax cut from the law this year, though that number is projected to shrink sharply in 2027 if individual tax cuts expire as scheduled in the law.

Republicans are confident that support will continue to grow as more Americans see lower taxes reflected in their paychecks. Their confidence was reflected last week by Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, who cited Senator Heidi Heitkamp’s vote against the tax bill when announcing he would run for her seat.

“There is no question the tax bill has fundamentally improved the overall political environment for Republicans,” said Josh Holmes, a former campaign manager and chief of staff for Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who is now president of the public affairs firm Cavalry in Washington.

Close to half of Americans now expect some direct benefit from the law — either a tax cut or a salary increase or bonus. Support for the bill is far stronger among that group: More than three-quarters of Americans approve of the law, compared with fewer than a third who don’t expect a benefit or aren’t sure.

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Gina Coats, a project manager for a plumbing company in Springfield, Mo., said she didn’t follow the tax debate closely last fall. But in January, when she began preparing the company’s payroll systems to handle the new law’s provisions, she realized almost every employee would take home an extra $20 to $40 per week.

“Everyone seems to be a little more upbeat,” Ms. Coats said. “It’s causing people to let go of their money a little more easily.”

Ms. Coats puts herself in that category. A few days ago, she called a contractor to move forward with a long-delayed plan to replace the roof on her house. That decision reflected her tax savings, she said, but also the strength of the local economy, which has meant lots of projects for her company, and stability for its employees.

“If we have more work in the bag, then I feel more comfortable,” Ms. Coats said.

Republicans have long promoted tax cuts as a way to encourage economic growth. Many economists are skeptical of that approach when unemployment is low and the Federal Reserve is moving to tamp down inflation. Rising support for the bill has coincided with an uptick in consumer confidence, although there aren’t yet clear signs that Americans are spending more.

Edging Upward

SurveyMonkey’s consumer confidence index, which combines five questions on Americans’ financial and economic outlook, rose in January and held onto those gains in February.

Note: Partisan categories include people who lean toward a particular party. | Source: SurveyMonkey

Colleen Doering, who runs a small facilities maintenance business outside Orlando, Fla., said she and her husband were paying several hundred dollars a month less in taxes because of the new law. As a result, they recently decided to spend $10,000 on a landscaping project and started to plan a vacation.

“My paycheck has increased, and if I see it in my paycheck, then I know my employees are seeing it in theirs,” Ms. Doering said.

And the law’s corporate tax cuts are giving the Doerings more money to spend on marketing, which they hope will allow them to expand their three-year-old business and hire more people. That may not be easy, however. Ms. Doering said it was already hard to find good workers, and the stimulus provided by the tax cuts could make it even harder.

“It was becoming more challenging to find good, solid employees with the right skill sets,” Ms. Doering said. “It’s even more challenging because some of these larger companies are grabbing up even more employees.”

About the survey: The data in this article came from an online survey of 10,255 adults conducted by the polling firm SurveyMonkey from Feb. 5 to Feb. 11. The company selected respondents at random from the nearly three million people who take surveys on its platform each day. Responses were weighted to match the demographic profile of the population of the United States. The survey has a modeled error estimate (similar to a margin of error in a standard telephone poll) of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points, so differences of less than that amount are statistically insignificant.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/business/economy/tax-overhaul-survey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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