Yes, in focus group after focus group, participants have backed higher taxes on high earners and the wealthy, often more readily than pollsters expected. Across the UK and the US, moderated discussions have found people drawing a sharp line between "tax the rich" slogans, which they distrust, and specific, well-targeted measures, which they tend to support. This pattern holds across very different groups and years. Swing-state Americans, UK voters in both Labour and Conservative seats, and even high earners asked about their own tax bills have each landed on a similar answer: people with the most money should contribute more, provided the extra revenue is spent credibly.
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Table of Contents
- What Did the Original UK Focus Groups Find?
- Did a Larger Poll Confirm the Focus Group Findings?
- What Do Recent US Battleground Surveys Show?
- What Do High Earners Themselves Say?
- Does Support Hold Up at the State Level?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Did the Original UK Focus Groups Find?
Tax Justice UK commissioned the polling firm Survation to run seven focus groups between December 2019 and January 2020, meeting in Conservative-won "red wall" seats such as Blyth Valley, Bury and Wrexham, alongside London, Long Eaton and Reading. The topic was taxing wealth, and the result was lopsided: no participant in any group called for tax cuts, and most backed taxing income from wealth at the same rate as income from work, according to Tax Justice UK's writeup of the Survation groups. That finding mattered because it cut against a common assumption that voters in traditionally conservative areas resist taxing wealth.
The groups spanned the political map, and the answer did not split along those lines. Participants were not simply anti-rich, though. They were wary of blanket "tax the rich" rhetoric, but became far more comfortable once the conversation turned to specific measures, such as ending pension tax relief for top earners or adding new council tax bands on expensive homes, as the Chartered Institute of Taxation's blog on the groups describes. The lesson for anyone reading focus group transcripts: vague slogans poll worse than concrete policies, even when the underlying sentiment is the same.
Did a Larger Poll Confirm the Focus Group Findings?
Focus groups show how people reason through an issue in their own words, but they involve small numbers of participants. Survation followed up with a larger, structured poll of 3,000 UK adults in March 2020 to see whether the focus group sentiment held at scale.
It did. The poll found 63% of respondents supported an annual wealth tax, including 57% of Conservative voters, a result consistent with the direction the focus groups had already pointed, according to Survation's polling for Tax Justice UK. The cross-party agreement is the notable part: majority support among voters from the party in government at the time suggests the appetite for taxing wealth was not confined to one political side.
What Do Recent US Battleground Surveys Show?
The same question has been tested more recently in the United States, where tax policy is often treated as deeply partisan. A University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey released October 1, 2026, covered 11 competitive states and 28 House districts and found bipartisan majorities favoring a 2% annual federal wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million and 3% above $1 billion, a policy estimated to raise $200 billion, according to the Program for Public Consultation's battleground findings.
The same survey found majority Republican support, in 31 of the 39 battlegrounds tested, for taxing capital gains as ordinary income for households earning at least $200,000, a change projected to raise about $164 billion. PPC director Steven Kull noted that the wealth, capital-gains and estate-tax changes targeting the super wealthy and high earners could together raise at least $455 billion, while separate PPC surveys found no bipartisan support for raising taxes on other income groups, as reported by Voice of the People. That pattern — support for taxing the top, not the middle — mirrors what the UK focus groups described years earlier: specificity about who pays wins support; vague redistribution rhetoric does not.
- Wealth tax: 2% above $50 million, 3% above $1 billion — projected $200 billion
- Capital gains as ordinary income: households earning $200,000+ — projected $164 billion
- Combined potential revenue from measures targeting top earners and the wealthy: at least $455 billion
- No comparable bipartisan support found for tax increases on other income groups
What Do High Earners Themselves Say?
One of the more direct tests of this question asks high earners about their own tax bills rather than asking the public about other people's money. A 2026 survey of 3,031 Americans earning more than $250,000 a year found that 32% — about one in three — said their own income tax should rise, according to MarketBeat's report on the survey.
That is not a majority, but it is a meaningful minority volunteering to pay more. The most common condition attached to that support was clear evidence the money would be spent effectively, cited by 28% of respondents. That condition echoes the UK focus groups' preference for specific, accountable measures over open-ended "tax the rich" commitments.
Does Support Hold Up at the State Level?
State-level polling adds another data point closer to where many readers vote. A DHM Research poll reported January 14, 2026, found that 61% of Washington state residents backed a 9.9% state tax on income above $1 million, including 71% of Democrats, 54% of Republicans and 52% of independents, according to CPA Practice Advisor's coverage of the DHM poll.
A majority of Republicans backing a millionaire's tax in a specific state is a notable break from the assumption that this issue splits cleanly along party lines. Combined with the battleground survey's finding of Republican support for capital-gains changes on high earners, the state-level result suggests the cross-party pattern seen in the UK groups has a real US counterpart, at least when the tax targets income or wealth well above what most voters earn.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do focus group participants support taxing all high earners equally, or only the very wealthy?
Support concentrates on the very top. The US battleground survey found bipartisan backing for a wealth tax above $50 million and capital-gains changes for households earning $200,000 or more, but no bipartisan support for raising taxes on other income groups, per the Program for Public Consultation.
Is this a partisan issue?
Not as cleanly as often assumed. The UK poll found 57% Conservative support for a wealth tax, per Survation, and the Washington state poll found 54% Republican support for a millionaire's tax, per CPA Practice Advisor.
What condition do high earners attach to paying more themselves?
The most common condition, cited by 28% of surveyed high earners, was clear evidence the additional revenue would be spent effectively, according to MarketBeat.
