Tax Liability Side Equivalence and Time Delayed Externalities

Abstract

Past experimental research suggests that attitudes towards corrective taxes may depend on whether they are levied on the supply side or on the demand side of the market, violating the well-known Tax Liability-Side Equivalence Principle. Other experimental research has shown that consumers are more likely to oppose the introduction of corrective taxes if their benefits occur only in the future. This paper tests whether manipulating the statutory incidence of the tax interferes with the negative delay effect on public support for taxation. Data from our experiment show that the delay effect is robust regardless of the statutory incidence of the tax.

Lingbo Huang

Professor of Economics