A new national poll finds a record share of voters saying their taxes are too high and that much federal spending is wasteful, with widespread frustration about how tax dollars are used and a sharp partisan split over whether the current administration is cutting waste effectively. The survey also shows who is most upset, how attitudes have shifted since last year, and that almost no one is turning to AI for tax help this season.
Voters now report higher tax burdens and more concern about government waste than at any recent point, with 70% saying the taxes they pay are too high. At the same time, three-quarters of respondents feel a large share of government spending is inefficient, a jump of roughly 18 percentage points from last year. That combination of sticker shock and distrust of spending is the headline here.
There is broad agreement across the electorate that federal spending contains a lot of waste, but views diverge on how well the administration is handling cuts. Nearly three-quarters of Republicans approve of the job being done, while nearly all Democrats and most independents say the effort is falling short. That partisan split matters because it shapes what voters will reward at the ballot box.
When asked what bothers them most about federal income taxes, the largest share named the wealthy not paying enough, though that concern eased slightly from last year’s peak. Close behind is frustration over how the government uses the money people send in, and smaller shares cite the sheer amount they pay or the system’s complexity. Those rankings help explain why both spending restraint and tax fairness language resonate in different ways.
The rise in worry is not limited to one corner of the country or one demographic group; it spread across education levels, regions, and ideological camps. The biggest year-over-year increases showed up among voters with graduate degrees, very liberal voters, Democratic men, and moderates, as well as rural residents and white voters without a college diploma. Shifts like these indicate the issue is moving past traditional partisan lines.
Perceptions of the administration’s performance on rooting out waste have also ticked downward overall, with a larger share rating the efforts as only fair or poor compared with last March. That growing skepticism shows up even as a strong chunk of Republicans continue to back the work being done. Voters are weighing results against rhetoric, and for many the balance is tilting toward disappointment.
“The data show why Democrats persistently frame budget, spending, and tax policy questions as a matter of the rich paying their fair share,” says Republican Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News survey with Democrat Chris Anderson.
Disapproval of how President Trump is handling taxes has climbed to a new high, reaching 64% across the electorate and up 11 points from a year ago. Dissatisfaction increased among Democrats, independents, and Republicans, signaling that tax policy has become a broad political vulnerability. That spike in disapproval makes tax messaging a live issue for both parties.
On the tech front, AI has not become a tax-season shortcut for most Americans: about 87% say they are not using AI tools to prepare taxes this year. The small group who are turning to AI skews younger and more diverse, with higher take-up among Republicans under 45, voters under 30, Hispanic and Black voters, and people who are employed. That suggests AI adoption for complex financial tasks is still in early innings.
The poll was conducted March 20-23, 2026, with 1,001 registered voters selected from a national file, and it included interviews by live interviewers on landlines and cellphones as well as an online component. Results carry a margin of sampling error of about plus or minus three percentage points for the full sample, and subgroup estimates have larger uncertainty. Standard weighting was applied to make the sample representative on core demographics.
