The literature on fiscal attitudes offers evidence of an interesting pattern: citizens simultaneously want higher government spending and lower taxes. However, recent studies argue that this may be just an artifact arising from misleading survey design. When properly informed about the fiscal trade-offs, citizens express much more coherent views. We contribute to the discussion using a survey of 1,800 adult citizens in Poland. By a split-sample experiment, we show that the answers about the desired role of the state vary greatly depending on whether the question includes a reference to taxes. Using the regression framework, we identify gender, educational level and individual income as significant determinants of the scale of misunderstanding of fiscal trade-offs.