While the absolute wealthiest Americans are now paying less federal income tax than they were two decades ago, two new polls show that most people support raising taxes on those earning over $250,000 a year.

Both a NY Times/CBS poll and one from ABC News/Washington Post say 72% of adults responded that they approve of increasing federal taxes on households making over a quarter of a million dollars.

While a majority of Republican respondents said they were in favor of a hike, that number was significantly higher for both independents and Democrats.

The polled people said it was fine to raise taxes on the rich to full that huge deficit hole, but according to CNN, it would seem to make more sense to raise everyone’s taxes by a small amount:

Hiking everyone’s tax rate by 1 percentage point would yield an additional $480 billion over 10 years. By contrast, raising the top two tax rates by 1 percentage point would yield just $115 billion.

And of course this is only a drop in the bucket when it comes to the expected $1.5 trillion deficit for just this year.

Where do you stand on the whole taxing-the-wealthy thing?

Americans agree: The rich should pay higher taxes [Chicago Breaking Business]

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