Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractGovernmental activities in welfare states influence private charitable giving predominantly in two ways: (1) government spending on the provision of public goods may cause crowding out of private charitable contributions; and (2) tax incentives may boost private charitable giving.For a rich sample of German income tax returns, we estimate elasticities of charitable giving regarding tax incentives, income and governmental spending. Using censored quantile regression, we are able to derive results for different points of the underlying distribution of charitable giving. Assuming a world with impure altruism (Andreoni 1990), we find evidence for impurely altruistic giving behaviour. Taking crowding out into account, tax deductibility of charitable giving suffices to foster private giving to offset foregone tax revenues.

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We apply conjoint analysis to study the influence of tax labeling and tax earmarking on German taxpayers' willingness to contribute. From a survey based sample we show that labeling and earmarking effects can substantially increase participants' willingness to contribute, which results in a considerable deviation from a pure consumption maximizing behavior. Furthermore, we give an explanation for this effect regarding socio-demographic attributes of German taxpayers. These results explain the variety in tax labels and provide implications for tax policy regarding further reforms of the tax and contribution system: "Labeling" and "earmarking" of contributions are important instruments in "selling" policies and increasing tax revenue.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractIn this paper we apply conjoint analysis as an empirical method to study the influence of tax labeling and tax earmarking on the perceived tax burden. As reference for the individual behavior we use the model of a rational utility maximizer described by the economic theory.We determine a significant influence of the labeling and the earmarking of taxes. We can show that the labeling and earmarking effect can decrease the perceived tax burden for the test persons which results in a deviation from a (rational) consumption maximizing behavior.These results give important implications for tax policy regarding further reforms of the tax and contribution system. IntroductionIn tax effects theory it is commonly assumed that taxpayers aim to maximize their consumption utility and with it -in a given labor supply -their net income. This assumption also implies the sub goal of taxpayers, namely to minimize their tax burden (in general: their contribution burden) in order to reach the largest possible consumption potential.Particularly studies on the willingness to evade taxes have shown that this neoclassical assumption is not always fulfilled in reality (Jonas, Heine, and Frey 1999 pp. 164ff. with further references). Many taxpayers seem to attach a positive utility to taxes and further contributions, as long as these contributions are consistent with their own sense of fairness and they find the contributions reasonable. Therefore attributes of a contribution such as its labeling can influence the individual evaluation of this duty and the subjective perceived This article is structured as follows: In section 2 we will first present a literature review of this topic, and then subsequently in section 3 we will derive our hypotheses on the behavior of 3 taxpayers in the selection of a specific combination of contributions. Section 4 describes the sample, the method of the conjoint analysis, the concrete research design, and the results of the study. In section 5 we will discuss the results as well as elaborate upon possible explanations. Section 6 presents our conclusions and topics for further research. Literature ReviewThe starting point in modern public finance of the tax earmarking discussion is Buchanan

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