Political Alignment, Attitudes toward Government, and Tax Evasion

Julie Cullen, Nicholas Turner and Ebonya Washington

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2021, vol. 13, issue 3, 135-66

Abstract: We ask whether attitudes toward government play a causal role in the evasion of US personal income taxes. As turnover elections move voters in partisan counties into and out of alignment with the party of the president, we find with alignment (i) taxpayers report more easily evaded forms of income; (ii) suspect EITC claims decrease; and (iii) audits triggered and audits found to owe additional tax decrease. Coupled with evidence that alignment leads to more favorable views on taxation and spending, our results provide real world evidence that a positive outlook on government lowers tax evasion.

JEL-codes: D72 H24 H26 H31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20190409 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E118084V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20190409.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pol.20190409.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Political Alignment, Attitudes Toward Government, and Tax Evasion (2021)
Working Paper: Political Alignment, Attitudes Toward Government and Tax Evasion (2018)
Working Paper: Political Alignment, Attitudes Toward Government and Tax Evasion (2018)
Working Paper: Political Alignment, Attitudes Toward Government and Tax Evasion (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejpol:v:13:y:2021:i:3:p:135-66

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/pol.20190409

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy is currently edited by Matthew Shapiro

More articles in American Economic Journal: Economic Policy from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().