Pride and Prejudice and Taxes

When I say the word "taxes" to you ... what do you think of when I say that? Daniel, 35, independent from California: I think of taxes as the cost of sort of running the country and maintaining a culture, infrastructure of our society. The cost of being an American.

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As you know, I'm studying Americans' views of taxation and my plan is to eventually write a book about it. But if it were your book on your views, what would be the most important chapter?

Alicia, 30, Democrat from Florida: I would think social responsibility, things we all owe each other as members of a functioning society. We're not —, you know, no man is an island. We are all in this together. And, I think that more people —, I would just really want to drive home the fact that I really think more people should take more responsibility for making sure that we're all okay as opposed to just themselves.

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So, I want to talk to you a little bit about the income taxpaying process. How do you feel when you're filling out your income taxes?

Roy, 61, Republican from Ohio: Oh, I feel like I am doing my part in supplying the needs and to help pay for things in this country that are needed. So, in a small way, I do feel like it's my civic duty and that I'm responsible for paying taxes.

The subject of taxation is fraught with moral import. Even relatively anodyne questions about taxes provoked my interviewees to make bold statements about responsibility, patriotism, and the duties of a citizen. Daniel is a former Marine. He talks about the "cost of being American." Alicia works for a national department store chain. She says "social responsibility" would be the most important chapter in her book on taxes. Roy is a retired letter carrier. He talks about taxation as a "civic duty." Rather than merely being a payment in exchange for services, or a requirement of the law, taxpaying is widely understood as an ethical act.

This chapter investigates how Americans think about the responsibility of taxpaying, and why they think taxpaying is a responsibility at all. In surveys Americans share a near-consensus view of taxpaying as a civic obligation. In interviews Americans have a lot to say on the subject of their fiscal citizenship, and they describe their responsibility in terms of their sense of shared interest, of fellowship with other Americans. Almost all of my interviewees justify taxpaying by noting that their lives are tied to the broader society, and therefore they must contribute their tax dollars to the wider social good.

But this social commitment is limited. When my respondents do not feel close bonds with other members of the community — as is often the case when it comes to recent immigrants — they see taxpaying as an unfair burden. Predictably, these comments carry strong racial undertones, and sometimes are accompanied by explicitly racist remarks. Thus support for taxpaying extends only to the borders of one's own sense of community. When taxpayers believe the political community is too inclusive, their attitudes about taxes tend to become more negative.

Taxpaying Is a Civic and Moral Responsibility, Americans Agree

While tax policy has become a highly controversial issue in recent decades, the idea that one has an obligation to pay one's taxes remains Americans' consensus view. Figure 1.1 presents some of the more commonly asked survey questions about the responsibility of taxpaying, across multiple wordings of a question, survey firms, and decades. All of these questions produce quite similar results; around four in five Americans, give or take a few percentage points, see taxpaying as a moral responsibility and tax evasion as morally wrong. This is a belief that is particularly strong in the United States; compared to residents of fourteen European countries, Americans are the most likely to say that cheating on your taxes is "never justified." And the level of agreement becomes even stronger when the question is framed in civic terms. Over 90 percent of Americans agree with the statement, "It is every American's civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes."

It is important to recognize exactly how unusual it is to get this level of accord on a survey question. By way of comparison, the percentage of people who say it is wrong to cheat on your income taxes is higher than the percentage of Americans who report liking Elvis Presley (79 percent), or who describe astronaut Neil Armstrong as a hero (75 percent). The percentage of Americans who deny that taxpaying is a civic duty is approximately equivalent to the percentage of Americans who report believing that there is a chance that Elvis Presley is still alive (7 percent) or that the moon landing was faked (6 percent). When asked about the duty of taxpaying, Americans are about as close to consensus as they ever get.

Moreover, Americans' "tax morale" (as scholars call this strong social norm of tax compliance) is more or less impervious to the question of government waste. When Americans are encouraged to think about wasteful government spending as an excuse for tax avoidance, they reject this argument. This was true even in the early eighties, when public estimates of government waste were at their peak and many states were rushing to pass new tax caps. In 1983, Time magazine asked respondents if they agreed with the statement, "Government spending is out of control, so there's nothing wrong with holding back a little bit on taxes." The question implies that Americans are buying a product that is not worth the price — surely that should reduce Americans' willingness to foot the bill. And yet, 80 percent of respondents disagreed, approximately the same percentage that typically describes tax avoidance as wrong.

The public commitment to taxpaying also transcends political partisanship. Though contemporary Republican elites are unified behind an anti-tax platform, Republican voters are more likely than Democrats to see taxpaying as a moral obligation. In 2013 the Pew Research Center asked, "Do you personally believe that not reporting all income on your taxes is morally acceptable, morally wrong, or is it not a moral issue?" A large majority, 73 percent of Americans, described tax evasion as morally wrong. Looking at this poll more closely, one finds that Republicans were more likely to oppose tax evasion on moral grounds. Seventy-eight percent of Republicans saw avoiding one's taxes as morally wrong, compared to only 71 percent of Democrats.

Of course, Democrats and Republicans are different in a number of ways, and one might think that these other characteristics are skewing this result. For instance, one might think that...