… The most recent YouGov/Economist poll asked, “Do you pay federal income taxes?” Seventy-eight percent said they do. Given that about 54 percent of households pay federal income tax that suggests roughly 24 percent of respondents report that they pay federal income taxes, but do not. …
What this means is that there is important political slippage between the tax policy debate in Washington and the way it is heard by many Americans. For Romney, this slippage is convenient as discussing income taxes as if they were all or even a majority of federal taxes paints the current tax system in a particularly unfavorable light. [cont.]
Michael A. Bailey, Georgetown U.