Ideology, Party, and Opinions of Taxes on the Rich and Middle Class in the United States: Evidence from the 2016 General Social Survey

Abstract

This paper examines attitudes toward taxes on the rich and middle class in the United States with emphasis on the impacts of political ideology and party identification. Using the 2016 General Social Survey, we estimate bivariate ordered probit models for a full cross-sectional sample, and subsamples stratified by party. Results suggest that proposals to reduce income and wealth inequalities and/or fund large federal expenditure increases by raising taxes on the rich will have difficulty in gaining the political traction necessary for success. Any proposal to raise taxes on both the rich and middle class has almost no chance of passage. Findings also indicate that party affiliation moderates ideological impacts on opinions of taxes on the rich and middle class, in some cases substantially.

Determinants of Hotel/Motel Tax Rates in Local Governments

“…Republican vote share (-) Political factors may play a role in determining tax rates, and we include Republican vote share as a variable in our model. Previous research has suggested that there may be a correlation between conservative political views and a preference for lower taxes or tax rates (Yen & Zampelli, 2022). Thus, we hypothesize that areas with a higher share of Republican voters may be less likely to adopt or increase an HMT rate.…”