Politicians' Opinions on Tax Reform

This paper examines politicians' stated preferences on tax reforms which aim to bring about a given change in revenue. The paper starts from a simple framework inwhich politicians are vote maximisers, analyses how disequilibria may affect tax choices and considers possible asymmetries in decisions. The empirical examination of the problem uses the stated preferences of 637 Flemish local politicians for both raising and lowering taxes by the same amount. Using multinomial logit estimation, symmetric and asymmetric effects are found and so the symmetry assumption underlying the standard approach is questioned in the analyses of tax choices.