Politicians' opinions on tax reform

This paper examines politicians' stated preferences on tax reforms which ai m to bring about a given change in revenue. The paper starts from a simple framework in which politicians are vote maximisers, analyses how disequilib ria may affect tax choices and considers possible asymmetries in decisions. The empirical examination of the problem uses the stated preferences of 63 7 Flemish local politicians for both raising and lowering taxes by the same amount. Using multinomial logit estimation, symmetric and asymmetric effec ts are found and so the symmetry assumption underlying the standard approac h is questioned in the analyses of tax choices.