Don't tax me? Determinants of individual attitudes toward progressive taxation

Friedrich Heinemann and Tanja Hennighausen

No 10-017, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This contribution empirically analyses the individual determinants of tax rate preferences. For that purpose we make use of the representative German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) that offers data on the individual attitudes toward progressive, proportional, and regressive taxation. Our theoretical considerations suggest that beyond self-interest, information, fairness considerations, economic beliefs and several other individual factors drive individual preferences for tax rate structures. Our empirical results indicate that the self-interest view does not offer the sole explanation for the heterogeneity in attitudes toward progressive taxation. Rather, we show that the choice of the favoured tax rate is also driven by fairness considerations.

Keywords: tax progression; policy preferences; fairness; ALLBUS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C42 D63 H89 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-pbe and nep-pub
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Don't Tax Me? Determinants of Individual Attitudes Toward Progressive Taxation (2015)
Journal Article: Don’t Tax Me? Determinants of Individual Attitudes Toward Progressive Taxation (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:10017

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