[Perceived Inequality and Political Demand].

Abstract

According to a recent social science debate, citizens tend to perceive income inequality rather inaccurately, which also influences their acceptance of redistributive policy programmes. The study reported in this article examines whether this can be confirmed using the example of the wealth tax. The wealth tax was suspended in Germany in 1996, but politicians have been debating its reintroduction for several years. Against the background of the debate on biased perceptions in the formation of distributional policy preferences, the article asks, first, how accurately the existing tax burden on wealthy households through the top income tax rate is assessed and whether a bias has consequences for the support of a wealth tax. Second, based on approaches that attribute an important role to mass media in the formation of distributional policy preferences, the influence of media framing on the acceptance of this controversial instrument is examined. According to data from an online survey, the burden of the top income tax tends to be overestimated. The more the tax is overestimated, the lower the political support for a wealth tax. Framing experiments with randomized control and treatment groups have mapped current discourses around the wealth tax and reconstructed positive frames-wealth taxes as an investment promoting tax reform, as a contribution to the reduction of national debt caused by the coronavirus pandemic-as well as negative frames-restriction of investments and loss of jobs if companies are burdened. Exposing potential job losses significantly lowers the support for a wealth tax. Strong support drops to the middle category of "partly/partly," a signal of indecision. The struggle for naming power is thus open. Support for a property tax becomes uncertain the more that political communication activates the framework of threatened jobs.