Do people agree with the idea that everyone should contribute to society by paying the taxes that they owe, and in return they should be supported by society when they need it?

We asked this question of a nationally representative sample of 3,140 adults across Great Britain in April 2022 as part of a wider survey on fairness, and the results, shown here, showed that 78% agreed or strongly agreed overall.

As part of a wider survey in August 2022, we asked 2,000 adults across Britain to guess the current status of tax inequality in the UK. The median estimate of the % of income spent on council tax for the poorest 10% was fairly accurate, but people significantly overestimated the % spent by the richest 10%.

We then asked the same group of people whether they thought that the real figures for tax inequality were fair or unfair.

We asked half of the group whether they thought British society was fair or unfair before they had seen these figures, and the other half after seeing the figures. The percentage of people in the second group who thought British society was unfair was 27 percentage points higher than in the first group.