Replication Data for: Taxing the 1 percent: Public opinion vs. public policy

Recent studies suggest that public policy in established democracies mostly caters to the interests of the rich and ignores the average citizen when their preferences diverge. I argue that high-income taxation has become a clear illustration of this pattern, and I test the proposition on a least likely case: Norway. I asked Norwegians to design their preferred tax rate structure, and subsequently matched their answers with registry data on what people at different incomes actually pay in tax. I find that within the top 1 percent, tax rates are far below (as much as 23 percentage points) from where citizens want them to be. A follow-up survey showed that this divergence is entirely driven by capital incomes being taxed too low. My results suggest that even in a fairly egalitarian society like Norway, the rich get away with paying considerably less in tax than what people deem fair.