Empirically, the poor are more likely to support increases in the level of tax progressivity than the rich. Such income-stratified tax preferences can result from differences in preferences of what should be taxed as argued by previous literature. However, it may also result from income-stratified perceptions of what is taxed. This paper argues that the rich perceive higher levels of tax progressivity than the poor and that tax perceptions affect individuals’ support for progressive taxation. Using data from an Austrian survey experiment, we test this argument in three steps: First, in line with past research, we show that individuals’ income positions are connected to individuals’ tax preferences as a self-interest rationale would predict. However, second, we show that this variation is mainly driven by income-stratified tax perceptions. Third, randomly informing a subset of the sample about actual tax rates, we find that changing tax perceptions causally affects support for redistributive taxation among those who initially overestimated the level of tax progressivity. Our results indicate that tax perceptions are relevant for forming tax preferences and suggest that individuals are more polarized in their perceptions of who pays how much taxes than in their support for who should pay how much tax.

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公平征税？认知差异如何影响对累进税的态度

根据经验，穷人比富人更有可能支持提高税收累进水平。这种收入分层的税收优惠可能是由于先前文献所主张的应纳税对象的偏好差异造成的。然而，这也可能是由于收入分层对纳税内容的看法造成的。本文认为，富人比穷人感知更高水平的税收累进性，并且税收感知影响个人对累进税的支持。使用奥地利调查实验的数据，我们分三个步骤检验了这一论点：首先，根据过去的研究，我们表明，个人的收入状况与个人的税收优惠相关，正如自利理论所预测的那样。然而，其次，我们表明这种差异主要是由收入分层税收观念驱动的。第三，随机告知样本的子集有关实际税率的信息，我们发现税收观念的变化会因果性地影响那些最初高估税收累进性水平的人对再分配税收的支持。我们的研究结果表明，税收观念与形成税收优惠相关，并且表明个人对谁缴纳多少税款的看法比对谁应该缴纳多少税的支持更加两极分化。