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Income tax and the motivation to work
Author(s) -
Rick Scott,
Paolacci Gabriele,
Burson Katherine
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of behavioral decision making
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.136
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0771
pISSN - 0894-3257
DOI - 10.1002/bdm.2078
Subject(s) - redistribution (election) , incentive , labour economics , economics , tax deduction , redistribution of income and wealth , wage , productivity , income tax , public economics , gross income , tax reform , state income tax , microeconomics , economic growth , political science , public good , politics , law
Does income tax influence the motivation to work? We propose that the degree of effort exertion in the presence of income tax depends on people's attitudes toward two key components of taxation: redistribution and government intervention. For people favorable toward both, working while taxed is aligned with personal identity and may actually enhance motivation. All others, however, may find taxes demotivating. In two incentive‐compatible labor experiments, framing wages as subject to an income tax significantly increased productivity among people chronically favorable toward both redistribution and government intervention. For everyone else, taxes did not reliably influence productivity. An objectively equivalent intervention that did not redistribute a portion of participants' wages (framed as a wage “match” rather than a “tax”) did not motivate anyone to work harder. Our findings suggest that the net effect of income tax on productivity partly depends on the distribution of attitudes toward redistribution and government intervention.