People are fed up with tax avoidance, want greater investment in public services and support higher taxes on wealth to pay for it.
Conservative voters are even more supportive of progressive tax reform than the general public. But attacks on “the wealthy” and “billionaires” fall flat with people who view money as security for themselves and their families.
These are some of the findings from our project to understand attitudes on tax, wealth and public services.
The project used a mix of focus groups and opinion polls to understand what people think about tax and how best to make the case for progressive tax reform. Our final report, Talking tax: How to win support for taxing wealth, sets out what we found.
We visited ‘Red Wall’ seats like Blyth and Wrexham, as well as other areas in London, Reading and Hastings. The groups highlighted a wide ranging dissatisfaction with the state of public services and no desire for tax cuts after years of austerity.
We also conducted opinion polls to understand attitudes.
It is important to know what the public thinks, but as campaigners we want to push the dial of public opinion in favour of progressive change.
The research was carried out by Survation and supported by the Friends Provident Foundation and Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI).
We updated some of the research questions with a tracker poll in October 2021. The survey tables and results are below.