Nearly three-fourths of Utahns want a tax cut this year from the Legislature, and 80 percent favor the tax reduction that legislators are most likely to give, a new Deseret Morning News/KSL-TV poll shows.

Pollster Dan Jones & Associates found in a survey conducted this past week that 70 percent of Utahns want a tax cut.

Only 23 percent said they didn't want a tax cut from the 2008 Legislature.

And eight out of 10 Utahns said they strongly or somewhat favor giving a 5 percent income tax cut to self-employed, self-insured Utahns who now don't get that tax break.

As a part of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s "health-care reform" efforts this year, there are two bills that would allow self-employed Utahns to pay for their health insurance in "pretax" dollars — as can all workers who get their health insurance through their employers.

Bills sponsored by Reps. Dave Clark, R-Santa Clara, and Jim Dunnigan, R-Taylorsville, would both give self-employed workers that $18 million tax break — which could equal tax cuts of between $150 and $500 a year for more than 70,000 taxpayers. "It's a matter of fairness," says Dunnigan.

The Morning News also asked Utahns if they favored several other possible tax breaks and what they thought of two suggested tax increases now before the Legislature.

But after Jones was in the field interviewing the 412 Utahns who made up his sample (which has a margin of error plus or minus 5 percent), some of those bills fell out of favor as the House and Senate GOP caucuses and Huntsman worked out the $13 billion budget for next year.

For example, early in the session it appeared that the most popular tax cut proposal among legislators was a $13 million property tax reduction associated with the state taking over all funding of a popular elementary reading program. Jones found that 78 percent of Utahns want that property tax cut.

But even though a number of Utahns saw significant increases in their home property taxes last November, legislative leaders and Huntsman have backed away from that tax cut in favor of the health-care reform measure.

House Republicans thought they could get a $100 million tax reduction — most of it in property tax — when December tax revenue growth estimates were so high. But last Monday updated tax projections actually came in lower. And now GOP leaders are talking about a smaller tax cut — perhaps $18 million for health-care reform.

Utahns have always hated the sales tax on unprepared food. And even though another round of food tax cuts was proposed this year, that bill has already been amended to remove the tax cut. Still, 80 percent of Utahns want the food tax further reduced (it is now 3 percent statewide).