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Working Paper
Tax Systems Analysis
José María Durán-Cabré, Alejandro Esteller-Moré, Leonzio Rizzo, Riccardo Secomandi

2023/02: Fiscal knowledge and its impact on revealed MWTP in Covid times: Evidence from survey data

Individual preferences over public policies should ideally be based on the possession of correct information about their reality. To test whether this holds, we conducted four waves of a survey, every six months since May 2020 (still under the COVID-19-lockdown), asking basic macro questions regarding the level of tax burden, of public debt, and of the underground economy in Spain. The percentage of correct responses (defined within broad ranges) never reaches 35%, and it is by far lowest for public debt. For the tax burden, left-wing individuals (with respect to right-wing) make more errors, and highly educated people (with respect to the rest of society) make fewer.



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