Abstract This article addresses the tax progressivity decision of a rent-maximising government under the circumstances that voters’ perceptions of the tax price of public goods are biased by cognitive anomalies (i.e. fiscal illusion) and that the electorate opts for re-appointing or for dismissing the incumbent according to a retrospective voting logic. Given electoral and constitutional constraints, we show that the design of the tax system can be sensibly affected by fiscal illusion within the population of voters. Specifically, we find that (i) the tax system is more (less) progressive when taxes and public expenditures are perceived less (more), and (ii) an increase in the median voter’s income may positively or negatively affect tax progressivity depending on the nature (pessimistic or optimistic) of fiscal illusion. The impact of fiscal illusion on tax progressivity has been validated by econometric analysis.

中文翻译：

---

追溯投票的财政幻想和累进税收

摘要本文讨论了以下情况下的租金最大化政府的税收累进性决定：选民对公共产品税价的看法因认知异常（即财政幻觉）而有偏见，并且选民选择重新任命或罢免根据追溯投票逻辑的任职者。考虑到选举和宪法方面的限制，我们表明，税制的设计可能会受到选民内部财政幻觉的影响。具体而言，我们发现（i）当税收和公共支出被较少（更多）感知时，税收系统更具累进性（渐进性）；（ii）选民中位数收入的增加可能对税收累进性产生正面或负面影响，具体取决于财政幻想的性质（悲观或乐观）。