Do elections influence taxation?

This paper focuses on electoral cycles in the Walloon region of Belgium. More specifically, this research analyzes how election years impact fiscal revenues using theoretical frameworks relative to political budget and political fiscal cycles. The object of this research is to show if different results can be observed based on the data of all the municipalities of an area and if these well-known political budget and fiscal cycles can be identified both before and after the election year. Drawing on a panel dataset of 262 Belgian Walloon municipalities from 2001 to 2017, our results indicate that the analysis of all 262 municipalities show similar patterns to previous studies. Notwithstanding, this research also establishes the significant impact of elections on fiscal revenues with a preliminary decrease followed by an increase of tax rates