Axe the Tax: Taxes Are Disliked More than Equivalent Costs

Tax collection is critical for the proper functioning of society. However, many people strongly dislike paying taxes. Although this distaste could be rational on economic grounds, the authors show that this attitude extends beyond simply disliking the costs incurred and affects behavior in counterno...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of marketing research 2011-01, Vol.48 (SPL), p.S91-S101
Main Authors: SUSSMAN, ABIGAIL B., OLIVOLA, CHRISTOPHER Y.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Consumer behavior
Corporate bonds
Costs
Fiscal policy
Marketing
Municipal bonds
Political identity
Political parties
Preferences
Sales taxes
Sin taxes
Studies
Tax evasion
Tax payments
Taxes
Taxpaying
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Tax collection is critical for the proper functioning of society. However, many people strongly dislike paying taxes. Although this distaste could be rational on economic grounds, the authors show that this attitude extends beyond simply disliking the costs incurred and affects behavior in counternormative ways. They demonstrate the phenomenon of tax aversion: a desire to avoid taxes per se that exceeds the rational economic motivation to avoid a monetary cost. Across five experiments, the authors provide evidence that people have a stronger preference to avoid tax-related costs than to avoid equal-sized (or larger) monetary costs unrelated to taxes. Tax aversion affects consumer preferences in a variety of domains, including standard store purchases, financial investments, and job selection. Furthermore, this tendency is most prevalent among people who identify with political parties that generally favor less taxation. Finally, encouraging participants who identify with "antitax" parties to consider positive uses of their tax payments mitigates tax aversion. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for consumer behavior research and tax policies.
ISSN:0022-2437
1547-7193
DOI:10.1509/jmkr.48.SPL.S91