About one-third of Americans like – or even love! – doing their taxes, a new survey from Pew Research Center finds.
If that leaves you scratching your head, count yourself among the majority. The survey also found that 56 percent of Americans either dislike or outright hate doing their taxes.
People with family incomes under $30,000 were more likely to say they like or love doing their taxes, while those with incomes of $75,000 or higher were more likely to say they dislike or hate tax time.
The most common reason people gave for being a fan of tax time is that they like getting a refund. Others said they thought they were good at it.
The most common reason for not enjoying tax season? It’s too complicated or requires too much paperwork. Others also noted that tax time is inconvenient and time-consuming.
That’s likely to hit home for anyone who will be scrambling to get their taxes done this weekend. As a reminder, the tax deadline is Monday, April 15.
(If you can’t file by then, here are the Internal Revenue Service’s tips on how to get an extension.)
It appears that plenty of people will be filing at the last minute. As of April 5, the IRS said it had received about 96.6 million tax returns, slightly fewer than at that point last year. The IRS had paid out about $214.5 billion in tax refunds as of April 5, also down slightly from a year ago.
In 2012, the IRS received a total of nearly 148.4 million individual tax returns, and paid out $309.65 billion in tax refunds.
The Pew survey of of 1,003 adults, which was conducted in early April, also found that about 7 in 10 Americans think it’s morally wrong to fail to report all your income. That’s consistent with other research that has shown that we may not like tax time, but most of us don’t think it’s OK to rob the tax man.
Related:
Hey class of 2013 grads, we want to hear from you!