Tax Salience, Voting, and Deliberation

Rupert Sausgruber and Jean-Robert Tyran

No 2009-25, NRN working papers from The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Abstract: Tax incentives can be more or less salient, i.e. noticeable or cognitively easy to process. Our hypothesis is that taxes on consumers are more salient to consumers than equivalent taxes on sellers because consumers underestimate the extent of tax shifting in the market. We show that tax salience biases consumers’ voting on tax regimes, and that experience is an effective de-biasing mechanism in the experimental laboratory. Pre-vote deliberation makes initially held opinions more extreme rather than correct and does not eliminate the bias in the typical committee. Yet, if voters can discuss their experience with the tax regimes they are less likely to be biased.

Keywords: Tax salience; learning; deliberation; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D72 H22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2009-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-pol
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Related works:
Working Paper: Tax Salience, Voting, and Deliberation (2008)
Working Paper: Tax Salience, Voting, and Deliberation (2008)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jku:nrnwps:2009_25

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