Surprise! Most Americans Don’t Like The IRS [Poll]

The IRS is in the news quite a lot lately, inspiring a new poll into how Americans perceive the tax agency. Surprise, surprise, most Americans aren’t terribly in favor of the organization.

According to a HuffPost/YouGov poll, most Americans have a negative opinion of the IRS, with about 59 percent viewing the organization unfavorably compared to 21 percent who have a favorable view of the IRS (or possibly, simply don’t understand what the IRS does).

The remaining 20 percent didn’t want to be audited said they weren’t sure.

The same poll also found that most Americans have heard at least a little bit about the latest IRS scandal, which involved the unfair targeting of conservative groups during tax season. However, only 36 percent said that they had heard a lot about the story while 41 percent hadn’t really been following the news. The remaining 23 percent said they hadn’t heard anything.

Then, 43 percent of of those surveyed said that they were concerned about the IRS targeting the government’s political enemies, while 25 percent said that they were only sort of concerned. The remaining 15 percent said that weren’t very concerned and the bottom 5 said that they weren’t concerned at all.

General regard for the IRS was pretty partisan, overall. Republicans and Independents had the most distaste for the IRS, while Democrats were somewhat divided.

Most interesting was the percentage of people who are calling for the IRS to be eliminated entirely after the organization’s latest bit of corruption. Though more Republicans and Independents favored the organization’s dissolution than Democrats by a modest margin, 35 percent overall want to see the IRS eliminated while 42 percent want it to continue on.

What do you think of the IRS and their latest scandal? Do you favor the organization? Do you think that they could be used by the government to target political enemies of the current administration? Sound off!

[Image via: isak55, Shutterstock]