Is there a demand for income tax progressivity?

Recently, Marhuenda and Ortuno-Ortin [Economics Letters 48 (1995) 319] have provided a popular support for progressivity theorem that says that a marginal progressive tax always defeats a marginal regressive tax as long as individuals vote for the tax scheme minimizing their tax liabilities and the median income is less than the mean income. In this paper we provide, under similar circumstances, a popular support for regressivity theorem according to which for any existing tax scheme there is always a majority support for a regressive reform reducing marginal progressivity (or increasing marginal regressivity). This regressive reform is supported by both extremes of the income distribution. Combining this result with Marhuenda and Ortuno-Ortinʹs result implies that vote cycling between regressive and progressive tax reform is inevitable and thus that the demand for progressivity cannot be established in the standard Downsian framework with self-interested voters.