Do Attitudes Toward Taxation Change When Economic Situations Change?: Evidence from Poland
The following is written by Kinga Wysieńska-Di Carlo and Matthew Di Carlo. Wysieńska-Di Carlo is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Polish Academy of Sciences.
In general, people tend to support expanding many of the programs funded by their taxes, but they don’t like paying taxes. In the U.S., for example, most people think the government should spend more on programs such as education, health care and urban renewal, but only a tiny fraction believes their own taxes, especially their federal taxes, are too low.
One of the possible explanations for these seemingly contradictory attitudes might be that people think tax systems should be more progressive – that is, they believe that tax revenue should increase, but that the increase should come from higher tax rates on higher earners. Poland is an interesting example in this context (if for no other reason than the fact that there were no taxes in Poland during the communist period). Today, when asked a generic question about whether the government should play a role in reducing income differences between the rich and the poor, Polish people tend to respond in the affirmative in larger proportions than their counterparts in virtually any other advanced nation. Yet responses to these types of questions can be quite different when they ask about specific issues, such as tax rates (Roberts et al. 1994).
Let’s take a quick look at some very tentative analyses that we (and our colleague Zbigniew Karpiński) have performed on this issue, with a specific focus on the question of whether people’s attitudes toward taxation change as their circumstances (e.g., income, employment) change.