The ‘Work and Corona’ Dashboard

Kalleitner, Fabian; Schlögl, Lukas; Bobzien, Licia

doi:10.31219/osf.io/3mcna

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

References 8 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…First, the experience of a broad-based, yet progressive, property tax reform in Freetown may have fed support for even more progressive but more narrowly focused taxation (taxing the wealthy and taxing large businesses). Second, it may be that support for taxing the wealthy and big businesses is somewhat more muted in the provinces because of, as alluded to earlier in the paper, a lack of trust in the potential for redistributive taxation and stronger status quo bias (Kalleitner et al 2021). As noted, however, we need to be cautious not to over interpret this data: in the absence of baseline data, or data about changes over time, these responses cannot tell us anything directly about the impact of the pandemic.…”

Section: Figure 12 Options For Funding the Recoverymentioning

confidence: 95%

“…6 We may expect substantial popular support for progressive taxation and redistribution in lower-income countries, amidst high income and wealth inequality and currently weak taxation of wealthy groups. However, evidence suggests that there is often limited support among poorer people for redistributive policies from which they would benefit (Holland 2018;Hoy and Mager 2018;Kuziemko, Buell, Reich and Norton 2014;Roemer 1998) and a general lack of popular concern about inequality despite its growth (Mijs 2021), and that people's preferences about taxation are dependent on the status quo in any context, as people tend to use the status quo as an anchor for fairness judgmentseven where the status quo is unfair (Kalleitner, Bobzien and Szendrö 2021). One possible reason for this apparent puzzle is a general lack of trust in the state and in the fairness of the tax systemin Sierra Leone, illustratively, the majority of citizens believe that elites are easily able to avoid taxes (Afrobarometer 2018), 7 and there has been an 11 per cent increase from 2011 to 2021 in the proportion of individuals who believe that people often or always avoid paying taxes (Isbell 2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Politics of Taxation and Tax Reform in Times of Crisis: Covid-19 and Attitudes Towards Taxation in Sierra Leone

van den Boogaard,

Prichard,

Orgeira

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Covid-19 pandemic has had significant fiscal implications around the world. A key question facing governments is whether and how the pandemic has shaped taxpayer attitudes and what that means for the prospects for tax reform and new revenue raising in the wake of the pandemic. We aim to understand the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on attitudes toward taxation and, in turn, to unpack what the crisis reveals about the dynamics and politics of taxation more broadly. We do so in the context of Sierra Leone with novel survey data, collected before the pandemic, shortly after the pandemic’s onset, and for almost a year afterwards. Four key findings emerge. First, immediately after the onset of the crisis we see increased support for taxation in Freetown, despite escalating economic challenges. Second, however, we also see taxpayers express increasingly conditional attitudes toward taxation; that is, at the same time that they show greater general support for taxation, they become more likely to believe that one could refuse to pay taxes if government fails to deliver services in return. Third, while we lack baseline data from before the pandemic on support for progressive taxation, we find rising and sustained support for progressive taxation over the course of the pandemic. Finally, although we see an initial increase in willingness to pay more for taxes for services immediately after the onset of the pandemic, we find evidence of that support eroding over time, potentially reflecting a combination of continued economic hardship, declining feelings of social solidarity, and some disappointment with government taxation. These findings have potentially significant implications for understanding both immediate responses to the pandemic, and the broader politics of taxation and tax reform.

show abstract

Section: Figure 12 Options For Funding the Recoverymentioning

confidence: 95%