While there is a large body of research on who should benefit from redistributive measures, few studies analyse public attitudes towards the question of who should pay for it. This study analyses whether the German (n=1062) and US (n=1088) public use established deservingness criteria (need, control over need, reciprocity, attitude, identity) not only to judge beneficiaries but also to judge contributors. We designed a factorial survey experiment where respondents evaluate varying fictitious persons in two subsamples with different hypothetical tax reforms. We asked respondents which persons should be considered for a reform that reduces taxes (giving frame) and which persons should be considered for tax increases (taking frame). We show the same vignettes (persons) in both subsamples. We argue that people use more effort cues in the giving frame to avoid benefits for free riders, while in the taking frame, no one receives benefits that can be misused.
The results in both countries show that cues more likely to include an interpretable effort component (cues such as past unemployment, more children, and more commitment to others) are more decisive for giving than taking. In contrast, the less interpretable income information is more decisive in evaluating contributors. Decisions on beneficiaries are also significantly more prone to discrimination based on nationality, especially in Germany. Our analysis shows that both sides of redistribution are not symmetric and that perceived efforts are more critical for debates about beneficiaries than contributors. We interpret these results as indicating that the public embraces tax relief as an incentive for promoting socially beneficial behaviors such as environmental protection, caring for children, and voluntary work while perceiving tax increases as a less suitable approach to set behavioral incentives.