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Taxation: Philosophical Perspectives
This is the first book to give a collective treatment of philosophical issues relating to tax. The tax system is central to the operation of states and to the ways in which states interact with individual citizens. Taxes are used by states to fund the provision of public goods and public services, to engage in direct or indirect forms of redistribution, and to mould the behaviour of individual citizens. As the contributors to this volume show, there are a number of pressing and thorny philosophical issues relating to the tax system, and these issues often connect in fascinating ways with foundational questions regarding property rights, public justification, democracy, state neutrality, stability, political psychology, and other moral and political issues. Many of these deep and fascinating philosophical questions about tax have not received as much sustained attention as they clearly merit.
The aim of advancing the debate about tax in political philosophy has both general and more specific aspects, ranging across both over-arching issues regarding the tax system as a whole and more specific issues relating to particular forms of tax policy. Thinking clearly about tax is not an easy task, as much that is of central importance is missed if one proceeds at too great a level of abstraction, and issues of conceptual and normative importance often only come sharply into focus when viewed against real-world questions of implementation and feasibility. Serious philosophical work on the tax system will often therefore need to be interdisciplinary, and so the discussion in this book includes a number of scholars whose expertise spans across neighbouring disciplines to philosophy, including political science, economics, public policy, and law.
The aim of advancing the debate about tax in political philosophy has both general and more specific aspects, ranging across both over-arching issues regarding the tax system as a whole and more specific issues relating to particular forms of tax policy. Thinking clearly about tax is not an easy task, as much that is of central importance is missed if one proceeds at too great a level of abstraction, and issues of conceptual and normative importance often only come sharply into focus when viewed against real-world questions of implementation and feasibility. Serious philosophical work on the tax system will often therefore need to be interdisciplinary, and so the discussion in this book includes a number of scholars whose expertise spans across neighbouring disciplines to philosophy, including political science, economics, public policy, and law.
- GenresPhilosophy
280 pages, Hardcover
Published September 26, 2018
2 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Martin O'Neill
149 books7 followersMarty O'Neill runs Corsum Consulting, which focuses on one thing: helping companies build value. He is a member of the National Speakers Association and frequent speaker and consultant on leadership, corporate culture and building enterprise value. Marty is also the co-author of Act Like an Owner (Wiley). He holds a number of board level positions with mid sized companies including The Advantage Incubator@bwtech, sits on the Business Advisory Board for the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) Tech Center and lectures in UMBC’s Entrepreneurship Program. Marty lives on the Magothy River in Maryland with his wife, their three children, and their yellow lab Sunny.
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February 9, 2022
I've been poking around in philosophy of taxation to try and deal with some fundamental questions on the proper relationship of the state to the individual. This book does not deal heavily in such fundamentals, but rather spends most of its time developing specific models and weighing their pros and cons. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact most of the chapters were quite interesting and gave me a lot to think about. However, I mention my expectations so as to indicate that, if you are looking to better establish some big ideas in the world of tax philosophy, this book may not help you.
What this book IS good for is exploring a variety of approaches to certain types of taxes and to the development of a just and effective tax system. Justice, however, is often here understood as a consequentialist ideal, meaning that the game boils down to deciding what a just society looks like and then liking a model if it gets us there. This is not to say that questions of just limitation of governmental action and oversight are not addressed (they are), but it seems to be something of a shared goal among theorists to overcome them, so as to be able to focus solely on the outcomes. For this reason, it is rather easy to predict at the beginning of a chapter that the author will find some analogy or lens by which to conclude that the tax in question really should not be seen as objectionable. It is hard to tell if this is a bias of the book, or of the field. Either way, while the arguments are often fruitful and thought-provoking, I would've liked to see a bit more diversity of opinion, rather than a boatload of theorists generally agreeing that "not wanting to be taxed is so last century."
Apart from Munoz-Dardé and Martin's section on the drawbacks of private charity, which I felt was obligated to address deeper questions of human feeling and place in society before it could successfully argue its point, and McLean's section on land taxation, which was so specialized to the British tax system that it was often quite challenging to take an interest, most of the sections were interesting, well-written, and did help me to develop a more informed perspective on taxation. I'd say it is worth the read if you are interested in exploring the modern landscape on the issue, but perhaps not if you are trying to sort out more fundamental questions.
What this book IS good for is exploring a variety of approaches to certain types of taxes and to the development of a just and effective tax system. Justice, however, is often here understood as a consequentialist ideal, meaning that the game boils down to deciding what a just society looks like and then liking a model if it gets us there. This is not to say that questions of just limitation of governmental action and oversight are not addressed (they are), but it seems to be something of a shared goal among theorists to overcome them, so as to be able to focus solely on the outcomes. For this reason, it is rather easy to predict at the beginning of a chapter that the author will find some analogy or lens by which to conclude that the tax in question really should not be seen as objectionable. It is hard to tell if this is a bias of the book, or of the field. Either way, while the arguments are often fruitful and thought-provoking, I would've liked to see a bit more diversity of opinion, rather than a boatload of theorists generally agreeing that "not wanting to be taxed is so last century."
Apart from Munoz-Dardé and Martin's section on the drawbacks of private charity, which I felt was obligated to address deeper questions of human feeling and place in society before it could successfully argue its point, and McLean's section on land taxation, which was so specialized to the British tax system that it was often quite challenging to take an interest, most of the sections were interesting, well-written, and did help me to develop a more informed perspective on taxation. I'd say it is worth the read if you are interested in exploring the modern landscape on the issue, but perhaps not if you are trying to sort out more fundamental questions.
Displaying 1 of 1 review