Iowa voters want everything on table in budget response

Iowa voters want the state to take a balanced approach to resolving the state's budget crisis, with more than half favoring a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. Eight percent identified raising taxes and fees as the best approach, according to a poll commissioned by the non-partisan Iowa Fiscal Partnership.

The key findings include:

• Iowa voters generally believe the wealthiest Iowans and multistate corporations benefited most from tax cuts over the last 20 years;
• More than six in 10 Iowa voters believe those same groups wealthy individuals and big companies do not pay their fair share of taxes in Iowa; and
• By large margins, Iowa voters believe small businesses, the working poor and middle-income Iowans either pay too much or about the right amount in state taxes.

  More than 80 percent of the voters wanted more disclosure about business tax credits and by a 2-to-1 margin favored personal income-tax reform along the lines of the proposed elimination of federal deductibility. That issue died in the 2009 legislative session.

The survey by Selzer and Associates sampled 500 Iowa voters 31 percent Democratic, 29 percent Republican and 36 percent independent from Nov. 11-15. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

For more, visit: www.iowafiscal.org.