Where Do My Tax Dollars Go? Tax Morale Effects of Perceived Government Spending.

Autor/inn/en	Giaccobasso, Matías; Nathan, Brad C.; Perez-Truglia, Ricardo; Zentner, Alejandro
Institution	National Bureau of Economic Research
Titel	Where Do My Tax Dollars Go? Tax Morale Effects of Perceived Government Spending.
Quelle	Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research (2022) PDF als Volltext (1); PDF als Volltext (2) Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Reihe	NBER working paper series. w29789
Beigaben	Illustrationen
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Monographie; Graue Literatur
DOI	10.3386/w29789
Schlagwörter	Schule; Moral; Finanzierung; Steuer; Steuerpolitik; Öffentliche Ausgaben; Arbeitspapier; Präferenz; USA
Abstract	Do perceptions about how the government spends tax dollars affect the willingness to pay taxes? We designed a field experiment to test this hypothesis in a natural, high-stakes context and via revealed preferences. We measure perceptions about the share of property tax revenues that fund public schools and the share of property taxes that are redistributed to disadvantaged districts. We find that even though information on where tax dollars go is publicly available and easily accessible, taxpayers still have significant misperceptions. We use an information-provision experiment to induce exogenous shocks to these perceptions. Using administrative data on tax appeals, we measure the causal effect of perceived government spending on the willingness to pay taxes. We find that some perceptions about government spending have a significant effect on the probability of filing a tax appeal and in a manner that is consistent with the classical theory of benefit-based taxation. We discuss implications for researchers and policy makers.
Erfasst von	ZBW - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Kiel
Update	2022/3