Abstract
The current increase in government spending, caused by COVID epidemics and the increasing visibility of leftist political groups in public media, emphasizes the short-term need for sustainable income taxation. In the long run, rising inequality worldwide makes taxation of high-incomes indispensable for sustainable economic development. This paper empirically studies public attitudes on taxation related to income, preferences for solidarity vs. individual performance, and reliance on the state in the Czech Republic. In this Eastern European country, the dichotomies above bear even more importance due to the communist past. We apply the hierarchical regression analysis with smoothing spline transformations to a representative sample of public opinion data (N = 1104, aged 15–95 years, M ± SD: 47.74 ± 17.39; 51.2% women, 18.50% with higher education). The results suggest that income was associated with the perception that taxes for the rich are inadequately high but was unrelated to perceptions of tax adequacy for average and poor groups of respondents. Higher solidarity and reliance on the state were associated with the desire to increase taxation of high-incomes and decrease taxation of poor income groups. Surprisingly, the reliance on the state was associated with a desire to decrease taxation of average-incomes and total taxation while increasing tax progressivity. Preferences for solidarity were associated with higher preferred overall taxation and more tax progressivity. The explanatory powers of preferences for solidarity and reliance on the state in explaining the variation in tax preferences are at least equivalent and, in some cases, twice as large as the explanatory power of the age, gender, education, and income altogether. The results above present new mechanisms that can contribute to sustainable endogenous economic development.
Highlights
In the aftermath of the COVID epidemy and long periods of unbalanced budgets, many developed countries face an increasing need to find new sources of budget revenues.Increased taxation of the rich seems to be one way to go
The results presented in this paper show the important ways the state could increase the sustainability of taxation and sustainability of economic growth via taxation
Criminal, or health effects of inequality, which indirectly affect the sustainability of economic development, the increased inequality directly affects the sustainability of economic growth
Summary
In the aftermath of the COVID epidemy and long periods of unbalanced budgets, many developed countries face an increasing need to find new sources of budget revenues. Increased taxation of the rich seems to be one way to go. Solidarity with the less fortunate ones is often chosen as a major argument for the so-called “solidarity tax,”, making the rich pay more [1,2,3]. Increasing income inequality raises the short-run public appetite to increase the taxes levied on the rich [4,5,6]. Progressive taxation seems to be indispensable for sustainable development, as it is one of the main ways to reduce inequality.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
