Volume 16, Issue 3

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.

Who are the taxpayers? In political rhetoric, the taxpayer is often the hardworking counterpoint to the undeserving welfare recipient, or the long-suffering victim of government corruption and ineptitude. And yet, despite its potency as a political symbol, we know little about who is understood by the public to be among the taxpaying class. New survey data reveal that there is a large discrepancy between the population of self-described taxpayers and the population of perceived taxpayers; about 93% of US adults describe themselves as taxpayers, but they imagine that only about 69% of their peers pay taxes. In the control condition, Republicans had lower estimates of the taxpaying population, were more concerned that low-income people do not pay enough in taxes, and low-income Republicans were more likely to doubt their own status as taxpayers. After receiving information about the substantial total tax liability of low-income people, Republicans and Democrats’ views of the taxpaying population converged. However, in the condition that focused on low-income Americans as net beneficiaries of the federal tax system, partisans had opposite responses. Low-income Democrats become less likely to describe themselves as taxpayers while low-income Republicans become more likely to assert their status as taxpayers. The results have implications for how and why the parties talk about tax policy, and suggest that the identity of “the taxpayer” has both an economic and a political resonance worthy of greater scholarly scrutiny.

In late 2017, congressional Republicans enacted a major tax bill despite voter opposition, resistance from organized interests, and considerable uncertainty about its policy consequences. Why did they do so? We argue that Republicans’ concern with their party’s reputation–in particular, its productivity brand–trumped negative evaluations of the legislation by citizens, interest groups, and policy experts. To support this claim, we analyze measures of legislative output, news media content, public opinion, and lawmaker sentiment. Our findings underscore the importance of party reputation in explaining legislative behavior and suggest that there may be explanatory value in distinguishing between different types of party valence brands.

This Essay describes the gap between the rhetoric and the reality of preferences for small business in the 2017 tax legislation. In the effort to shape public opinion on the legislation, proponents frequently highlighted the benefits for small businesses while often eliding the much larger benefits for large businesses and the wealthiest individuals. This strategic framing follows a recognizable historic pattern whereby tax benefits for the rich are sold to the public through a rhetoric emphasizing benefits lower down the economic ladder.