Tax Designs and Tax Attitudes
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Andrea Louise Campbell
Andrea Louise Campbell is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at MIT. Professor Campbell’s interests include American politics, political behavior, public opinion, and political inequality, particularly their intersection with social welfare policy, health policy, and tax policy. She is the author of “Trapped in America’s Safety Net: One Family’s Struggle” (Chicago, 2014), How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Citizen Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton, 2003) and, with Kimberly J. Morgan, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Provision (Oxford, 2011). Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, Comparative Political Studies, Politics & Society, Studies in American Political Development, and Health Affairs, among others. She holds an A.B. degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Social Insurance and served on the National Academy of Sciences Commission on the Fiscal Future of the United States.
Abstract
The watchword of the policy feedbacks approach to political analysis – that politics shapes policy – suggests that the way in which taxes are designed may influence how the public feels about various levies: their support for those taxes, their perceptions of fairness, and their willingness to pay them. Hypotheses about the design features of different taxes Americans pay, including tax regressivity or progressivity, the manner in which they are exacted, their actual and perceived costs, and the visibility and desirability of resulting benefits, are examined with closed- and open-ended survey data. Taxes with more attractive design features are generally more positively perceived by the public. Open-ended responses help explain the fairness perceptions and popularity of several taxes, including a widespread belief that estate taxes constitute “double taxation” and the considerable embrace of the notion that “everyone pays” state sales tax (as opposed to the federal income tax, where some rich and poor people “get away” without paying). These results help explain why some taxes invite more ire than others.
About the author
Andrea Louise Campbell is the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science at MIT. Professor Campbell’s interests include American politics, political behavior, public opinion, and political inequality, particularly their intersection with social welfare policy, health policy, and tax policy. She is the author of “Trapped in America’s Safety Net: One Family’s Struggle” (Chicago, 2014), How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Citizen Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton, 2003) and, with Kimberly J. Morgan, The Delegated Welfare State: Medicare, Markets, and the Governance of Social Provision (Oxford, 2011). Her research has appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Behavior, Comparative Political Studies, Politics & Society, Studies in American Political Development, and Health Affairs, among others. She holds an A.B. degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Russell Sage Foundation. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Social Insurance and served on the National Academy of Sciences Commission on the Fiscal Future of the United States.
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©2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Intro – The Forum – October 2018 volume
- Tax Designs and Tax Attitudes
- Who are “The Taxpayers”?
- When Reputation Trumps Policy: Party Productivity Brand and the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act
- The Rhetoric and Reality of Small Business Preferences in the 2017 Tax Legislation
- Book reviews
- Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union
- Clashing over Commerce: A history of US trade policy
- Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder To Stay in Office
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Intro – The Forum – October 2018 volume
- Tax Designs and Tax Attitudes
- Who are “The Taxpayers”?
- When Reputation Trumps Policy: Party Productivity Brand and the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act
- The Rhetoric and Reality of Small Business Preferences in the 2017 Tax Legislation
- Book reviews
- Brexit: Why Britain Voted to Leave the European Union
- Clashing over Commerce: A history of US trade policy
- Gendered Vulnerability: How Women Work Harder To Stay in Office
