Research exploring if people in Latin American countries want to tax the ‘rich’ more

Research exploring if people in Latin American countries want to tax the ‘rich’ more uncovers surprising results and brings a new perspective to political science.

Data research by Néstor Castañeda, Deputy Director at the Data Science Institute and Associate Professor of Latin American Political Economy at the Institute of the Americas is bringing a new perspective to political science by uncovering surprising results on progressive taxation.  

Working alongside academics from the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway University of London, Dr Castañeda has been measuring tax preferences in highly unequal countries to understand public appetite to ‘tax the rich.’  

Using survey experimental techniques the team surveyed representative samples of people in highly unequal countries like Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil.  

Contrary to what might be expected in established industrialised countries, they found there was little appetite to tax the rich.  

Their research found that despite huge inequalities between the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor,’ in countries that had good quality public services such as healthcare and education there was no strong preference to increase taxes for the rich.  

Neither Mexico or Colombia, which offer similar social support systems but differ politically showed much appetite to tax the rich, despite extremely high levels of inequality and low levels of taxation.  

They also found that in Mexico where social benefits are relatively higher there was the least desire to impose redistributive taxes.  

These findings suggest that inequality won’t necessarily trigger demands to change the status quo between the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’ but may ultimately maintain it.  

Research into people’s tax preferences is relatively new in political science and Dr Castañeda and the team are planning to continue breaking new ground with further research in Brazil.  

Dr Castañeda said: “Gathering and analysing data like this is important as it proves the potential impact of fiscal policy and can contribute to the design of more progressive policies in the future.  

“It also improves our understanding of how the public might react to changes in the tax structure which is important in Latin America and other developing countries where tax revenues are low, and governments need to increase taxation.  

“If governments can understand the mechanisms that increase people’s appetite for progressive taxation, it can inform their policy decisions. For example, there is evidence that if you provide high-quality social protection and good quality public services people are less likely to evade their taxes and keener to support progressive taxes.”  

He added: “It’s interesting that we found people in countries with low taxation levels and relatively higher levels of social benefits want a better distribution of benefits over taxing the rich, regardless of their levels of inequality.  

“Meanwhile, countries with low taxation and low benefits are more inclined to tax the rich despite low expectations of the benefits being more fairly distributed.”  

The team are publishing a paper on their findings and are continuing their research in Brazil which has expanded its social protection system and introduced an NHS-style healthcare system in recent years. They hope to understand how this has impacted public attitudes to taxation.  

For more information about Dr Castaneda’s research please visit https://sites.google.com/view/nestorcastaneda