Only a quarter of registered voters are seeing the effects of the recently passed tax cuts in their paychecks, according to a Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday. The majority of respondents – 51 percent – said they haven’t seen a change in their take-home pay, while 24 percent said they aren’t sure.
Those with higher incomes were more likely to report an increase, with 40 percent of respondents with incomes over $100,000 a year saying they’ve noticed a bump in the last few weeks. Only 16 percent of those earning less than $50,000 a year said they’ve seen a change. Republicans were also more likely to report a take-home pay hike, at 32 percent, compared to 21 percent for Democrats and 22 percent for independents.
The differences in responses could be related to the size of the tax cuts for different income levels. Lower- and middle-income workers can expect to see relatively modest increases in their take-home pay. According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, “Taxpayers in the bottom quintile (those with income less than $25,000) would see an average tax cut of $60, or 0.4 percent of after-tax income. Taxpayers in the middle income quintile (those with income between about $49,000 and $86,000) would receive an average tax cut of about $900, or 1.6 percent of after-tax income.” Spread out across 52 or 26 paychecks, those changes could be easy to overlook, especially as health care costs continue to rise. By contrast, workers in the top quintile (over $149,400) can expect to see a tax cut worth $7,640 on average – worth nearly $300 per paycheck for those paid biweekly.
The poll also found that the tax overhaul was supported by 45 percent of respondents, with 35 percent opposed. Those are the same results as a month ago, suggesting that the tax cuts, while supported by a plurality of voters, aren’t getting more popular, contrary to Tuesday’s New York Times poll that showed approval for the tax overhaul rising to 51 percent. At a more general level, though, the polls are in rough agreement, showing that about half of the country now supports the GOP tax bill.
The Politico/Morning Consult poll of 1,989 registered voters was conducted from February 15 to February 19, and the results had a margin of error of plus/minus 2 percentage points.
