Taxing the Rich in Haiti

• In Event: Politics of Inequality in Developing Contexts

Abstract

How can the wealthy be lured to contribute to pay more tax? Where states have weak capacities and the costs of compliance are high, coercion is not an effective option to tax the wealthy. But the affluent should be convinced to voluntarily accept progressive taxation. Haiti is one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the world, yet there is an absence of public opinion research on tax preferences and progressivity in this context. We design and analyze an original conjoint experiment embedded in an online survey of 1500 Haitian citizens, in which two tax proposals are pitted against each other, randomly varying a series of attributes. To tap into the taxation preferences of the wealthy, heterogeneous treatment effects for those living in affluent households versus other individuals are analyzed.

Authors

• Sarah Andrea Berens, University of Bremen

• Ana Isabel Lopez Garcia, Maastricht University