Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Authors
- Introduction
- PART I TAXATION, STATE AND SOCIETY: RECIPROCITY AND THE LIMITS OF THE POWER TO TAX
- Voluntary Compliance Beyond the Letter of the Law: Reciprocity and Fair Play
- What is Wrong with Endowment Taxation: Self-Usership as a Prerequisite for Legitimate Taxation
- Is Taxation on a Par with Forced Labour?
- Conflict of Trust: EU Member States’ Fiscal Sovereignty and the Ideal of the Internal Market
- PART II Trust and morality: tax governance in need of transparency
- PART III International taxation: in search of democratic legitimacy
- PART IV Behavioural aspects of taxation and trust
Is Taxation on a Par with Forced Labour?
from PART I - TAXATION, STATE AND SOCIETY: RECIPROCITY AND THE LIMITS OF THE POWER TO TAX
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2018
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Authors
- Introduction
- PART I TAXATION, STATE AND SOCIETY: RECIPROCITY AND THE LIMITS OF THE POWER TO TAX
- Voluntary Compliance Beyond the Letter of the Law: Reciprocity and Fair Play
- What is Wrong with Endowment Taxation: Self-Usership as a Prerequisite for Legitimate Taxation
- Is Taxation on a Par with Forced Labour?
- Conflict of Trust: EU Member States’ Fiscal Sovereignty and the Ideal of the Internal Market
- PART II Trust and morality: tax governance in need of transparency
- PART III International taxation: in search of democratic legitimacy
- PART IV Behavioural aspects of taxation and trust
Summary
ABSTRACT
Redistributive taxation, Robert Nozick famously argued, is morally ‘ on par with forced labor’. This chapter aims to counter that his argument for this conclusion rests on a presupposition that entails the moral acceptability of redistributive taxation. In more detail, a distinction is drawn between benefit and redistributive taxation under which the former but not the latter is morally acceptable. However, any form of taxation presupposes a society where there is a background of trust. It requires that cooperation be possible and widespread. This is only possible given that we trust one another in a certain way – that we can, and do, see a trusting party ‘ s dependence on us not as an opportunity to exploit but as a reason to prove ourselves trustworthy. This background of trust then entails some concern for others ‘ welfare. It is then a short argument from our possession of this concern at the individual level to the legitimacy of redistributive taxation. As such, there can be no fundamental philosophical division between benefit taxation and redistributive taxation. Both, one might say, are levied for goods we care about.
INTRODUCTION
Taxes pay for government. Minimally conceived, the operation of government, through implementing laws and policy decisions, secures the functioning of the market and achievement of various public goods. Since this provision is to everyone ‘ s advantage, there is little debate about taxation for this purpose, or benefit taxation. This is not to say there are no issues; there are many: there are questions of the appropriate level of taxation, of how to secure vertical equity, of what should be counted as a public good, how the market should be regulated and so on. Rather, it is to say that the legitimacy of benefit taxation is unproblematic: insofar as it secures benefits for all, it can be conceived simply as a ‘ user charge ‘ whereby one pays for goods and services enjoyed. However, as well as paying for government, taxation is also a means by which government can implement a conception of fairness or justice. Taxation can be redistributive.
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- Information
- Building Trust in Taxation , pp. 73 - 88Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2017
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