State voters down on tax bill
With a House vote looming, just 30 percent support measure — with predictable partisan splits
With Republicans on Capitol Hill poised to approve a massive tax bill as soon as Tuesday, most Californians say President Trump’s Christmas gift to America is a present they’d rather return than unwrap.
More than half of California voters, 51 percent, oppose the tax bill, and just 30 percent support it, a poll released Monday found. Most believe only corporations and the super rich will benefit — not them.
But opinions are sharply divided along partisan lines, with 67 percent of Democrats opposing the bill and 60 percent of Republicans supporting it. It could become a defining issue for California members of Congress in next year’s hotly contested midterm elections.
“Democrats are tending to believe what the Democratic leadership are saying,” said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the poll, “and Republicans are believing
what their leadership is saying.”
The poll, conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, surveyed 1,000 California registered voters between Dec. 7 and 16.
The GOP bill — which Trump has said he’ll sign into law by Christmas — slashes tax rates for individuals and corporations. But it also limits many deductions that are popular in California, including the deduction for state and local tax and for mortgage interest. Many welloff Californians benefit from those deductions because of the Golden State’s high state taxes and property values.
Just 17 percent of respondents believe that the bill would be good for California, while 52 percent say it would be bad for the state.
And only 20 percent of state voters say they think they’ll personally benefit from the bill, compared with 40 percent who think it will harm their finances. People at every household income level, from less than $20,000 to more than $100,000, agreed it would be bad for them.
The House is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday, with the Senate following Tuesday or Wednesday.
California impact
Revisions in the final bill have limited the impact of the changes on most Californians — taxpayers will still be able to deduct mortgage interest for loans up to $750,000 and up to $10,000 in state and local taxes. Republican leaders insist that a large majority of Americans will see a tax cut.
But the cuts for individuals will expire in 2027, while the larger corporate tax cuts are permanent, noted Steven Bliss, who studied the bill for the California Budget and Policy Center. The bill also adds more than a trillion dollars to the deficit, which could lead to cuts in other programs.
“People are paying attention to what the bill would do,” Bliss said. “You’re looking at major spending cuts to core public services in the next few years to provide huge tax breaks for wealthy households and corporations.”
An analysis by the leftleaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released this weekend found that, under the bill, 87 percent of Californians would see a tax cut in 2019, while 11 percent would pay higher taxes. By 2027, however, 69 percent would see a tax cut and 28 percent would have a tax hike — and the gains would go overwhelmingly to the rich.
The poll results are a sign of the effectiveness of Democratic messaging bashing the bill in a state that strongly dislikes Trump. Democratic leaders have hammered away at the bill, arguing that it’s targeted at Californians’ pocketbooks. “People who live in states that voted against Donald Trump” will end up paying for the corporate tax breaks in the bill, Gov. Jerry Brown said in a video posted Monday on Twitter.
The results also show the political dangers for the California Republican members of Congress who vote for it this week. Eleven of the 14 GOP members of California’s delegation to the House of Representatives backed a version of the bill when it came up for a vote in their chamber last month — including some incumbents who Democrats see as top targets in the 2018 midterms.
The poll used Englishand Spanish-speaking interviewers and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
Several national polls have found similar results, with a majority of Americans opposing the bill.
John McBride, 69, a freelance designer and editor in Berkeley, is among those who oppose the bill. “It’s a very narrow shift of money to the top of the pile,” said McBride, a Democrat. “Some of what’s in there is appalling.”
He predicted he would pay more taxes from what he’s heard about the bill.
But in a sign of messaging problems for Republicans, it seems likely he’ll actually end up getting a tax cut — his mortgage interest is less than $750,000 and he pays less than $10,000 in state and property taxes. He also thought the bill still included a provision that would make some college students pay taxes on their tuition waivers, something that was removed from a previous version.
Divisive bill
Bart Larrenaga, a Republican who lives in San Jose, also opposes the bill — he’s calculated he will have to pay about $2,000 more each year, even when the lower rates are taken into account, because he won’t be able to deduct all of his state income tax or the property tax on his condo.
“I’ve crunched some of the numbers, and I’m pretty sure it will not be to my benefit personally,” said Larrenaga, 42, who is considering leaving the GOP in part because of the tax bill. House Republicans voting for the bill should face political repercussions, he said: “They ultimately should be more concerned with their constituents than their party line.”
But Robert Huerta, 28, a political independent from Richmond who recently started a real estate firm, said he supports the bill. He expects his business will pay fewer taxes and his personal taxes will go down as well — he takes the standard deduction, which doubles to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples, so he won’t miss the mortgage or state tax deductions.
“Cutting taxes will help get the economy going,” he predicted. “Californians hate it just because of Trump.”