Tax Foundation: Most think people should pay something in taxes

Most adults in the United States do think that people should pay at least some amount in taxes each year, a conservative-leaning tax group said Wednesday.

The Tax Foundation cited its own 2009 poll, which found that two-thirds of adults believed that “everyone should be required to pay some minimum amount of tax to help fund the government.”

Around one in five said it was fair for some people not to pay taxes, and 15 percent said they weren’t sure.

The issue of how many people don’t pay income taxes roared back into the spotlight this week, after secretly taped remarks showed the GOP nominee for president, Mitt Romney, saying that the 47 percent of people who pay no income tax wouldn’t vote for him and were dependent upon government. 

Democrats have slammed Romney’s remark, saying the former Massachusetts governor essentially wrote off almost half of the country

According to the most recent data from the Tax Policy Center, 46.4 percent of households did not have an income tax liability in 2011.

But at the same time, the majority of those households do pay some taxes, be it payroll taxes or state and local levies. The 2009 Tax Foundation poll only asks whether everyone should be required to pay some amount of taxes.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that roughly six out of 10 of the households that don’t pay income tax do pay payroll taxes. 

The elderly are also a large chunk of the population that don’t pay income taxes. According to TPC data, around half of the households that had no income tax liability in 2011 did so through the use of tax breaks.

Of those, around 44 percent used preferences that benefit the elderly, such as a bigger standard deduction and the ability to exclude Social Security payments. 

The 2009 Tax Foundation poll was an online survey of 2,002 adults, and was conducted by Harris Interactive. 

---