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Whether people with high incomes should pay a larger, the same, or a smaller share of their income in taxes; GSS wording differs slightly between the progtax and taxshare versions, but both use a five-point scale from much more to much less.
AI-matched An AI model grouped these questions and mapped their answers onto shared categories, and a second AI review checked and corrected the grouping and mapping. No person has checked it: compare the question wordings and the answer mapping below before reading the lines against each other.
Latest: 30% answered “Much larger share” in GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes, 2021.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes → web (2021).
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each column is one survey wave, evenly spaced rather than to scale in time; hover for exact shares.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes → web (2021).
Shares of people whose answer maps onto these categories (non-answers and answers outside the scale are left out), because surveys differ in whether they offer “don’t know.” Each point is one survey wave at the middle of its field period. Lines from different surveys are never spliced together.
Groups differ from everyone by 9 points on average across all answers, in GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes.
| Line | Question | Match | How answers map |
|---|---|---|---|
| GSS: Share of income tax high earners should pay | Share of income tax high earners should pay Some people think those with high incomes should pay a larger proportion (percentage) of their earnings in taxes than those who earn low incomes. Other people think that those with high incomes and those with low incomes should pay the same proportion (percentage) of their earnings in taxes. Do you think those with high incomes should pay a much larger proportion, pay a larger proportion, pay the same proportion as those who earn low incomes, pay a smaller proportion. pay a much smaller proportion? Caveat: Reference wording; explicitly describes proportion of earnings and lists all five options. | identical | Pay much more → Much larger share; Pay more → Larger share; All pay same → Same share; Pay less → Smaller share; Pay much less → Much smaller share |
| GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes | Share of income the rich should pay in taxes Do you think that people with high incomes should pay a larger share of their income in taxes than those with low incomes, the same share, or a smaller share . . . Caveat: Shorter wording; says 'share of income' and names only three options in the question, though the scale has five points. | equivalent | Much larger share → Much larger share; Larger → Larger share; The same share → Same share; Smaller → Smaller share; Much smaller share → Much smaller share |
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes → web (2021).
Groups differ from everyone by 5 points on average across all answers, in GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes.
Dashed lines mark changes in how interviews were done, which can shift answers: 1. GSS: Share of income the rich should pay in taxes → web (2021).
Subgroup charts are picked automatically. Of every breakdown in the data (party, ideology, age, sex, race, education, income, region, religion, and community type), these two put their groups furthest from everyone’s answers: the gap is averaged across all answer categories and waves, with each group weighted by its share of respondents. Party and ideology count as one choice, so the second chart shows a different kind of split. Groups with an effective sample under 50 in a wave are left out of that wave.