Do you know to whom you pay your taxes? The case of decentralised Spain

Abstract

Surveys show that most citizens are unable to correctly identify the taxes received or the services provided by the different levels of government. This shortcoming represents an obstacle to democratic accountability and for the efficiency gains that the theory of fiscal federalism attributes to fiscal decentralisation be effective. Exploiting the 2015 wave of the Spanish Institute for Fiscal Studies' Fiscal Barometer, this paper empirically determines the profile of citizens who are best able to identify the allocation of taxes among the central, regional and local levels of government. The estimates suggest that these citizens are those who are able to identify the government that provides the services financed by those taxes, who correctly identify other taxes received by the same government, who reside in a foral region, and who enjoy a high level of education.