Public Ignorance and Estate Tax Repeal: The Effect of Partisan Differences and Survey Incentives

Abstract

We re-examine whether the broad support for repeal of the estate tax is a result of citizen ignorance. We find that increasing information about the estate tax or politics in general has very different effects on Republicans and Democrats. While high-and low-information Republicans support estate tax repeal, Democratic support is higher among those who know less. However, most highly informed people in both parties support repeal. We also show that standard surveys overestimate the extent of misinformation about the estate tax. Therefore, "ignorance" is not a compelling explanation of why so many people support estate tax repeal.