No. 239: Preferences for Taxing Wealth and Income

We examine German individuals’ preferences for income and wealth taxation and, importantly, the interplay between these two tax instruments. While prior research often examines wealth tax preferences in isolation, actual tax systems consist of multiple interacting taxes. To capture this dynamic, we elicit preferred tax burdens in a large-scale online experiment with 2,702 participants randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: respondents state either an unspecified overall tax burden, separate income and wealth tax burdens, an income tax burden only, or a wealth tax burden only. Our baseline estimates reveal average (marginal) tax rates of approximately 17.4% (18.9%) for income and 4.1% (2.3%) for wealth. We find that participants associate wealth with an ability-to-pay taxes: when a wealth tax is not explicitly available, preferred income tax rates are approximately 30% higher. However, when both instruments are available, participants do not treat them as substitutes. Instead, they appear to treat the two taxes as separate mental bins: the standalone income and wealth tax burdens are combined in a notably additive manner, resulting in a significantly higher overall tax burden. Further, respondents apply implicit exemptions for low levels of wealth and favor a wealth tax base focused primarily on financial assets and real estate other than the primary residence.