A taste for taxes: Minimizing distortions using political preferences

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Huet-Vaughn, Emiliano; Robbett, Andrea; Spitzer, Matthew
• 署名单位: Claremont Colleges; Pomona College; Middlebury College; Mathematica
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104055
• 发表日期: 2019
• 关键词: Taxes; labor supply; Efficiency cost of taxation; experiment; Political preferences; ideology; distortion; expenditures

摘要

We conduct an experiment with online workers to assess whether the distortionary effect of a tax is sensitive to the ideological match between taxpayer and tax expenditures. We find that, among self-identified political moderates, the labor supply elasticity with respect to the net of tax wage is significantly smaller when individuals pay taxes to a favored government agency as compared to an unfavored one. While the tax has a significant distortionary effect in the latter case, with a point estimate for the labor supply elasticity of approximately 0.77, the elasticity point estimate is close to zero when taxes go to a favored agency. There is also an increase in total output for the matched population among moderates. There is no evidence that these effects hold for self-identified liberals or conservatives. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.