Regardless of their political party, most Americans now disapprove of the Internal Revenue Service targeting certain conservative groups and believe that it was done for political reasons.
According to a new New York Times/CBS News poll released Thursday, 68 percent of respondents believe that IRS targeting was actually motivated by politics and not tax code policy.
Americans are also divided over whether the IRS was acting on its own, or if the Obama administration was involved in the targeting. Four in ten Americans believe the IRS acted on its own while 44 percent said they think the Obama administration was involved in the targeting. The study also found that those who have followed the scandal closely are more likely to believe the administration intervened in the targeting.
While 60 percent of respondents agree that the IRS’s targeting was “wrong,” they disagree over whether its actions were actually illegal or simply unethical. Only 26 percent of people surveyed think that the IRS did nothing wrong, with twice as many Democrats than Republicans thinking this was the case.
Linda Sinnott, a Tea Party supporter, told The New York Times that it makes sense that the administration was involved because the groups targeted “are the people that don’t agree with him [President Obama].”
Dick Howland, a Democrat who has experience filing tax-exempt status paperwork with the IRS, doesn’t think the IRS was wrong to apply extra scrutiny.
“Everyone gets scrutinized. Churches get scrutinized. If all of a sudden a whole bunch of political organizations were trying to get tax-exempt status, of course you’d look into it,” he told the Times.
The New York Times/CNN study of 1,022 adults nationwide was conducted May 31-June 4, 2013. It has a margin of error of +/- three percent at a 95 percent confidence level.
