Higher political trust has been argued to stimulate support for redistribution. We revisit this argument by distinguishing between two types of trust: trust in efficient government spending and trust in limited plutocratic influence. By developing a political economy model of income taxation and public spending, we found that, while higher trust in efficient spending increases the ideal tax rate, higher trust in limited plutocratic influence may decrease it. To test this theory, we conducted an online survey experiment in Japan with approximately 2,000 respondents, where we measured and manipulated these two types of trust separately. The results showed that increasing trust in efficient spending had no effect on preferences for income taxation. However, increasing trust in limited plutocratic influence reduced support for progressive income taxation among supporters of governing parties. The additional experiment using a conjoint design to

measure policy preferences also confirmed the result on the effect of trust in limited plutocratic influence.