Do Voters Understand the Benefits of Taxes?

Authors

• Benjamin Carter, University of Alabama
• Alessandro Del Ponte, Chapman UniversityFollow
• Peter DiScioli, Stony Brook University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-17-2026

Abstract

We use economic experiments to study a fundamental question in political economy: Do voters understand the benefits of taxes? Participants play an economic game as members of a virtual society composed of computer players. In each round, the players earn low or high income, see the distribution of income, and then vote for low or high taxes. We test whether participants vote rationally for high taxes when poor and low taxes when rich, following a classic model in political economy, or whether they focus on the burden of taxes more than the benefits. Across three experiments, poor players voted against high taxes 30% to 50% of the time, and they were more opposed when the same policy was labeled “taxes” than when it was labeled “sharing.” In Experiment 2, Singaporean participants opposed taxes at about the same rate as those of Americans in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, participants’ opposition to taxes persisted when they received low income every round. These results support the burden hypothesis: voters focus more on the burden of paying taxes than on the benefits they provide. We reflect on what the results imply for the politics of taxes.

Comments

This article was originally published in Perspectives on Politics in 2026. https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272610512X

Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2GH0KJ.

Recommended Citation

Carter, B., Del Ponte, A., & DeScioli, P. (2026). Do Voters Understand the Benefits of Taxes? Perspectives on Politics, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759272610512X

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.