Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes

Description

A surprising and revealing look at what Americans really believe about taxes Conventional wisdom holds that Americans hate taxes. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. Bringing together national survey data with in-depth interviews, Read My Lips presents a surprising picture of tax attitudes in the United States. Vanessa Williamson demonstrates

Vanessa S. Williamson is a fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. She is the coauthor of The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.

"Excellent. . . . Williamson's most important contribution is her insistence that taxes are crucial in defining notions of what it means to be a real, deserving, and politically engaged American citizen."---Joseph Thorndike, Tax Notes "A Tea Party expert draws on fascinating interviews with 49 Americans--white, black, Asian and Hispanic, urban and rural, Republican and Democrat--on their views on taxation, from form-filling to government waste to loopholes, and neatly upends the view of US citizens as reluctant taxpayers."---Karen Shook, Times Higher Education "Read My Lips is a useful corrective to the dire view of Americans as irrational and ill-informed antitax zealots. It also offers Democrats a useful insight: Maybe Republicans' perceived edge on taxation owes less to the popularity of their views than to Democrats' own failure to marshal a civic commitment to taxes for liberal ends. Having identified the problem, Williamson may be pointing the way to a solution to the ugly politics of taxation."---Josh Mound, Chronicle of Higher Education "One of the smartest books I've read in recent years is Vanessa Williamson's Read My Lips: Why Americans are Proud to Pay Taxes. In it, she busts the myth that Americans are knee jerk anti-taxation, but rather finds that like people in most other countries, we have a problem with taxes only when we feel that somebody isn't paying their fair share."---Rana Faroohar and Edward Luce, Financial Times "The idea that the bulk of Americans hate to pay taxes has become a pervasive idea across the country and among lawmakers. Vanessa Williamson's book debunks this myth and shows with in-depth research that most Americans see paying taxes a mark of good citizenship and that any resistance to taxation has more to do with the perception of unfairness in the system. Read My Lips is an insightful dive into how Americans truly relate to their tax system and a must read for understanding the tax debate."---Aidan Davis, Just Taxes Blog "An inspired, engaging, and thought-provoking contribution to social policy, economic sociology, and our understanding of the relationship between the state and society."---Cristobal Young, Contemporary Society