Wealth origins and asset composition: experimental evidence on taxation preferences

We examine how public preferences for wealth taxation vary with both the source of wealth accumulation and the composition of inherited assets. Using randomized experiments embedded in the 2018 Luxembourg Household Finance and Consumption Survey of cross-border commuter workers, we test whether taxation preferences differ between inherited and saved wealth, and whether preferences for inheritance taxation depend on asset type. Our first experiment reveals an unexpected pattern: respondents are significantly less likely to support taxation when provided with any information about wealth source — whether inherited or saved — compared to a baseline condition without source information, contradicting standard fairness theories predicting higher taxation of inherited relative to saved wealth. Treatment effects are broadly uniform across subgroups, with the exception that prior supporters of inheritance taxation show an attenuated response to the inherited wealth framing. Our second experiment randomly varies asset type (cash, family business, or residential property) across inheritance values ranging from €100,000 to €1,000,000. Contrary to expectations, respondents propose somewhat higher tax rates for family businesses than for monetary inheritances. These findings suggest that information framing effects may dominate normative considerations in shaping taxation preferences.