Fiscal Illusion and "Excessive" Budgets: Some Indirect Evidence

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Abstract
The Leviathan literature has, as one of its themes, the manipulation of tax structures to minimize voter perceptions of their tax shares and hence predicts excessive public budgets. Existing confirmatory tests of this proposition, including those published in this journal, have been indirect and concentrated on the tax side of the budget in isolation. Questionnaire evidence on U.K. fiscal knowledge of both expenditure and taxation suggests no overall bias toward pessimistic or optimistic tax illusions but rather general ignorance.