Historically, it is safe to say that very few laws did as much to stoke inequality as laws touching descents and hereditary transmissions. This paper attempts to see if the classical liberal tradition can endorse inheritance taxation so as to further fair equality of opportunity, as well as to lessen inequality of undeserved wealth. It argues that fair equality of opportunity is a necessary feature of market societies to make sure that they remain competitive. Hence, inheritance taxation is (...) most likely necessary from a classical liberal point of view as an instrument of social mobility to counter notable problems of social immobility, say hereditary vocational stratification, which a system of private property rights creates. (shrink)

Historically, it is safe to say that very few laws did as much to stoke inequality as laws touching descents and hereditary transmissions. This paper attempts to see if the classical liberal tradition can endorse inheritance taxation so as to further fair equality of opportunity, as well as to lessen inequality of undeserved wealth. It argues that fair equality of opportunity is a necessary feature of market societies to make sure that they remain competitive. Hence, inheritance taxation is (...) most likely necessary from a classical liberal point of view as an instrument of social mobility to counter notable problems of social immobility, say hereditary vocational stratification, which a system of private property rights creates. (shrink)

Daniel Halliday examines the morality of the right to bequeath or transfer wealth, and argues that inheritance is unjust to the extent that it enhances the intergenerational replication of inequality, concentrating opportunities in certain groups. He presents an egalitarian case for imposition of a significant inheritance tax.

This paper examines a rarely-discussed argument for the right to bequeath wealth. This argument, popular among libertarians, asserts that opposition to the practice of inheritance is prone to over-generalize, such that opponents of inheritance cannot avoid condemning other uses of private property, like gift-giving. The argument is motivated by an interesting methodological claim, namely, that the morality of bequest ought to be evaluated from the perspective of the donor, and not evaluated in ways that invoke the effects of (...) bequest on the distribution of wealth. This paper argues that this donor-centric approach ultimately favors restricting the right of bequest. Specifically, I maintain that bequest generally carries a lower opportunity cost than other uses of property. Accordingly, inheritance tax is less coercive than other taxes, and bequest is less obviously as generous an act as gift giving. While the arguments made here will encourage traditional opponents of inheritance (such as egalitarians), I also suggest why they might be welcomed by at least some types of libertarian. (shrink)

Inherited wealth will be of increasing importance in years to come. Yet inheritance taxation is unpopular, and part of this unpopularity is due to family concerns. Such taxation is seen by many as morally problematic because it is taken to violate important family values. In this article, we explore five family arguments against inheritance taxation: firstly, whether we have a right to benefit our children; secondly, whether it is a virtue to benefit one's children; thirdly, whether children have (...) a right to their parent's belongings, due to common ownership; fourthly, whether inheritance taxation may impair a vital sense of continuity and belonging; and lastly, an argument from incentives that appeals specifically to the relation between parents and children. We conclude that none of the arguments provide strong objections against a moderate or even a high inheritance tax rate, at least not when special provisions are made for things like family houses or farms. However, since the arguments all introduce concerns that should be assigned some weight, it would be unjust to abolish inheritance entirely. (shrink)

What attitude would a just state take to the inheritance of property? Would confiscatory taxes on the estate of the deceased be morally acceptable, or would they represent some kind of wrong? While there is a good amount of political philosophical scholarship that considers the desirability of inheritance tax, there appears to be little that has considered it from the perspective of rights theory, asking what kind of thing a right to bequeath or to inherit would be, and (...) whether those putative rights are defeasible. I argue here that putative inheritance rights are best made sense of as interest-rights. However, while agents may have interests in bequest and inheritance, it is also plausible that the community as a whole has interests that would be served by a confiscatory inheritance tax; and if inheritors’ and testators’ interests are strong enough to generate a prima facie right, it is also plausible that the community would have a competing prima facie right. Importantly, there is reason to think that the community’s interests trump the testator’s and the inheritor’s; if there are thoroughgoing rights in respect of inheritance, it is not at all clear that a highly confiscatory tax would violate them. (shrink)

This article provides a survey of key topics on just inheritance taxation. It does so by first presenting the main arguments in the debate. Here, I distinguish between arguments in the academic literature and the various arguments which have proven important in the public debate. Secondly, I outline four influential proposals when it comes to how inheritance should be taxed. Finally, I examine a recent controversy and point towards a number of themes that have not been sufficiently discussed.

In Germany, transfers of assets between generations are subject to inheritance and gift tax.1 However, there are different views on whether or not the present level of taxation is high enough. Our study looks at the potential for applying increases. We show that the constitutional framework does indeed allow for higher taxation in the case of intergenerational property transfers. We identify the essential points in current German inheritance and gift tax law, which make it possible to transfer large (...) assets with no or low inheritance tax burden. For these points as well as the determination of tax rates, we propose reform approaches and present options for the use of possible additional income. (shrink)

Imagine two friends. Anna inherits nothing and works for every penny she has, while Mary inherits millions. How should a world that respects individual autonomy and private property rights treat Anna’s earnings and Mary’s inheritance? Should it tax them the same, or tax one more heavily than the other? If the latter, which one? The conventional wisdom holds that although some “right” libertarian theories justify taxing income, none justify taxing inheritances. Such taxes are “expropriations” and “an especially cruel injury” (...) that “run[] roughshod over [a] deceased’s interest in the ends his property will serve.” This essay explores the standard libertarian objections to taxing gifts and bequests and argues that libertarians overstate their case when distinguishing the taxation of gratuitous transfers from other types of taxation. At minimum, the benefit theory of taxation embraced by many minimal statists and classical liberals mandates that the receipt of gifts and bequests should be taxed to the recipient. Moreover, the goals of curbing inherited political power and preventing wealthy families from insulating their members from market competition provide two additional explanations for why taxing inheritances to recipients is compatible with classical liberal values. (shrink)

‘Marx on tax’ as an effective antidote to inequality is an overlooked theme within his own output, but also for our own time. Marx theorising on tax is seen even by pre-eminent Marxists as an empty box, but Marx and Engels in fact had plenty to say about tax. Their coverage embraces progressive taxes, both on capital and income, a strong preference for direct over indirect taxation, inheritance tax, land-value tax, taxes on financial transactions, and state finances around the (...) world. Tax also provides the battleground for a rare sight of Marx as campaigning activist, in 1848, matched in the same period by close ally Wilhelm Wolff. The tax policies of Marx and Engels have been neglected because they are primarily to be found in their journalism and letters. They are no anachronistic curiosity but perfectly applicable to the income and wealth inequalities of our own era. (shrink)

Both in the U.S. and in France, inheritance is probably the main factor of wealth concentration among the richest part of the population, and of its intergenerational reproduction. In so far as wealth is an opportunity, a reform of inheritance tax could be a mean to ensure a fairer distribution of opportunities in the society. Many reforms of inheritance systems have been conceived at least since Bentham. The identification and the analysis of ethical properties of reforms as (...) the ones designed by Mill, Rignano, Solvay, Huet and Haslett show that the latter is certainly the one which most satisfies the requirements of an ethics of inheritance. (shrink)

Bentham and J. S. Mill can be regarded as utilitarian tax-reformers distinguished from political economists who were simply averse to taxation. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the difference between Bentham's and Mill's tax reform programmes. Bentham proposed the law of escheat and a tax on bankers' and stock dealers' profits, subject to the principle of least sacrifice of enjoyment. He also planned to correct the inequality of the land tax by extending it into a general income tax. (...) Mill proposed an income tax on the basis of the principle of equal sacrifice of enjoyment. He also proposed a progressive inheritance tax and a variable land tax, regarding unearned income as a fit subject for a special tax. Consequently, Mill used Bentham's ideas and tools to take a step towards a more egalitarian programme. (shrink)

This article suggests enacting an accession tax instead of the estate duty – which was repealed in Israel in 1981. This suggestion evolves from historical and normative explorations of the tension between perceptions of familial intergenerational property rights and justifications for the “death tax,” as termed by its opponents, i.e., estate and inheritance tax. First, the Article explores this tension as expressed in the history of the Israeli Estate Duty Law. This chronological survey reveals a move from the State’s (...) taken-for-granted interest in revenue justifying the Law’s enactment in 1949; moving on to the “needy widow” and “poor orphan” in whose name the tax was attacked during the years 1959–1964, continuing to the abolition of the tax in 1981 in the name of efficiency and the right of the testator to transfer his wealth to his family, and finally cumulating with the targeting of tycoon dynasties that characterizes the recent calls for reintroducing the tax. Next, based on the rich literature on the subject, the Article maps the arguments for and against intergenerational wealth transfer taxation, placing the Israeli case in larger philosophical, political, and pragmatic contexts. Lastly, it associates the ideas of accession tax and “social inheritance” with inspirational sources for rethinking a realistic wealth transfer taxation to bridge the gap between notions of intergenerational familial rights and intergenerational social justice. (shrink)

Recently, there has been an effort to make libertarianism compatible with a redistributive inheritance tax: When the tax is levied, the taxpayer in question is already dead and as such she cannot be a bearer of rights. The state is therefore allowed to redistribute the (value of) the estate according to some distributive principle. I consider (and finally dismiss) four successive arguments, each concluding that the state is allowed to use the estate for redistributive purposes. I show that neither (...) of them is able to reconcile (right-) libertarianism with a redistributive inheritance tax. Instead of trying to square the circle, proponents of such a tax should meet the theoretical essentials of (right-) libertarianism head-on. (shrink)

In this comparative analysis of the UK and Sweden, we consider, if inherited wealth is most deserving of redistributive taxation, then what lessons, if any, may be learned from the difficult paths faced by this tax in these countries. We conclude that the political momentum behind the Swedish family business was distinct, and, possibly, capable of travel to the UK. The research for this article is part of the FairTax EU project, which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 (...) research and innovation programme 2014-2018, grant agreement No. FairTax 649439. (shrink)

Two elderly sisters who lived together complained of discrimination on the ground that, when one of them died, the other would face a heavy inheritance tax bill, unlike the survivor of a marriage or civil partnership who enjoys a “spousal exemption” under the Inheritance Tax Act 1984. They lost in both the lower chamber of the European Court of Human Rights and on appeal to the Grand Chamber. At first instance, discrimination was found but held to be proportionate (...) and justifiable; in the Grand Chamber, no discrimination was found, as siblings and spouses/civil partners were held not to be in an analogous situation. As an attempt to avoid a tax borne only by the comparatively wealthy, this case might not naturally engage feminist sympathies. But it demonstrates how unworthy claims can produce positive results by drawing attention to society’s dismissive treatment of old people and calling into question the legal and economic privileges enjoyed by legally-bound couples at the expense of everyone else. (shrink)

The Altdeutsche Textbibliothek [Old German Text Library] is the series of editions of German medieval texts with the richest history. Foundedin 1881 by Hermann Paul, it has been edited by leading Germanists- Georg Beasecke, Hugo Kuhn, Burghart Wachinger. Since 2001, responsibility for the series has rested with Christian Kiening. In the meantime, the series comprises some 120 volumes, with an exemplary combination of closeness to the original manuscript(s) with ease of reading, philological accuracy with concern for university teaching. It includes (...) recognised editions of "classical" authors from around 1200- some with commentary- but also presents veritable editions of authors' works (Notker the German) and high-quality new editions (Eckenlied, Heinrich von dem Türlin). (shrink)

Die ATB ist die traditionsreichste Editionsreihe der germanistischen Mediävistik. Begründet 1881 von Hermann Paul, wurde sie von führenden Fachvertretern, Georg Baesecke, Hugo Kuhn, Burghart Wachinger, betreut. Seit 2001 liegt die Verantwortung in den Händen von Christian Kiening. Die mittlerweile etwa 120 Bände verknüpfen exemplarisch Handschriftennähe und Lesbarkeit, wissenschaftliche Arbeit am Text und Blick auf die akademische Lehre. Sie umfassen anerkannte, zum Teil kommentierte Ausgaben 'klassischer' Autoren der Zeit um 1200, aber auch veritable Werkausgaben (Notker der Deutsche) und anspruchsvolle Neueditionen (Eckenlied, (...) Heinrich von dem Türlin). (shrink)

This volume presents philosophical contributions examining questions of the grounding and justification of taxation and different types of taxes such as inheritance, wealth, consumption or income tax in relation to justice and the concept of a just society. The chapters cover the different levels at which the discussion on taxation and justice takes place: On the principal level, chapters investigate the justification and grounding of taxation as such and the role taxation plays and should play in the design of (...) justice, be it for a just society or a just world order. On a more concrete level, chapters present discussions of these general reflections in more depth and examine different types of taxation, tax systems and their design and implementation. On an applied level, chapters discuss certain specific taxes, such as wealth and inheritance taxes, and examine whether or not a certain tax should be favored and for what reasons as well as why it is just to target certain kinds of assets or income. Finally, this volume contains chapters that discuss the central issue of international and global taxation and their relation to global justice. (shrink)

It is clear that a revival of republicanism is under way, but it is not clear that the republican tradition truly speaks to contemporary concerns. In particular, it is not clear that republicanism has anything of value to say about economic matters in the early 21st century. I respond to this worry by delineating the main features of a neo-republican civic economy that is, I argue, reasonably coherent and attractive. Such an economy will preserve the market, while constraining it to (...) serve public purposes, and promote what John Rawls calls a ‘property-owning democracy’. To accomplish these ends, a civic economy is likely to concern itself with the character of work and the workplace, to take steps to preserve and protect the sense of community or publicity, to levy an inheritance tax and a progressive consumption tax, and to provide some kind of ‘social’ or ‘civic’ minimum of support to all citizens. Key Words: republicanism • equality • self-government • deliberative politics • civic virtue • publicity • markets • property-owning democracy • basic income • inheritance tax • consumption tax. (shrink)

It is customarily assumed that welfare-state thinking can only appear as a product of the sharpening conflict between revolutionary socialists and the defenders of the status quo; the case of Tom Paine proves otherwise. Although he defended private enterprise (to the exclusion of large landed property), he developed a forgotten early version of a comprehensive system of public welfare in the second part of his The Rights of Man and in his Agrarian Justice, where he argued that the new revolutionary (...) democratic government based on representation and universal suffrage has the duty and the means not only of relieving poverty but of preventing it by a system of universal allowances for marriage, childbirth, the raising of children, basic education, old age pensions and temporary housing and employment for the unemployed of the metropolis. This, he said, should be financed by a progressive inheritance tax levied especially on landed estates. (shrink)

Inheritance is normally distributed to the heirs, but during the 20th century the state claimed a share of the estate through inheritance taxation. The purpose of this article is to examine how the successively increased importance of inheritance taxation in Scandinavia was justified in political debate between 1890 and 1935. The results shows that the tax was mainly motivated by the state’s increased revenue needs. The tax was not controversial in Denmark or Sweden, but caused strong conflicts (...) in the Norwegian debate. (shrink)

Inheritance is about cold cash and warm emotions. On a macroeconomic level inherited wealth is a source of inequality, but on a personal level it is a gift between relatives that can involve gratitude, but also a sense of obligation and duty continuity, but also conflicts. These perspectives often clash in public discussions about inheritance law and taxation. This article discusses the implicit notions about inheritance and their relationship to positions in the public debate in three Danish (...) filmic works: Per Fly’s Inheritance (2003), first season of the TV-series The Heirs (2014) and Christian Sønderby Jepsen’s The Will (2011). (shrink)

"Providing a thorough examination of distributive justice, Distributive Justice and Taxation presents and discusses different theories of what constitutes a just society, and how goods should be distributed in such a society. The distribution of goods in society has direct and serious consequences on the lives of the people. There are therefore important questions to be asked regarding the justice of that distribution: Is it just that some people inherit large fortunes while others inherit nothing? Do rich people have additional (...) access to political power because of their wealth? If so, is that just? And should the ambition for economic policies be to combat poverty, or to reduce inequality? This book explores these questions and a number of others through the analysis of related theories, spanning from strong egalitarian theories on the left to right-wing libertarianism. The chapters also explicitly examine the case of taxation - one of the most important and controversial measures of distribution of goods in society. Placing emphasis on the case of Norway and using data from both the UK and USA as a point of comparison, the work details and explores the key features of the tax system. It concludes by presenting and evaluating arguments for and against taxes such as income tax, wealth tax, and inheritance tax. This book is essential reading for those interested in distributive justice, as well as students and scholars of philosophy, law, political science and economics. J2rgen Pedersen is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Department of Business Administration, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway"--. (shrink)

The term ‘predistribution’ draws attention to the need for policies and institutions that are designed to improve the position of the least advantaged members of society by generating a fairer distribution of opportunities and benefits from the operation of the free market system, with less reliance on redistributive tax-and-transfer mechanisms. Although the idea of progressive predistribution has only recently begun to attract the attention of politicians and commentators in the mainstream media, there is an older and more philosophically grounded predistributive (...) approach that goes back to the idea of the property-owning democracy proposed by Economist James Meade and further developed by liberal political philosopher John Rawls. In this article, I argue that neither the Meadeian/Rawlsian POD model, nor the more recent analysis of the idea of progressive predistribution, provide a clear and convincing account of the distinction between predistributive and redistributive mechanisms. I then argue that a more promising account of this distinction is provided by the idea of the socialization of economic rent through taxation of the rental value of land, and that there are good reasons to think that a shift in the burden of taxation away from production and employment and on to the rental value of land might turn out to be both more genuinely predistributive and more effectively progressive than other possible predistributive mechanisms that have recently been proposed, most notably the aggressive taxation of private inheritances as a means to broaden the distribution of privately owned capital and productive property. (shrink)

Libertarians famously contend that the minimal state is the most just social arrangement because it secures individual freedoms and basic political rights. They also oppose wealth transfer taxation, i.e. taxation of inheritances, bequests, and inter vivos gifts, arguing that it violates people's right to use their wealth freely. However, as I argue, libertarian opposition to wealth transfer taxation causes practical problems for their commitment to a minimal state, as there is strong empirical evidence demonstrating that wealth transfer taxation is required (...) to secure the political rights necessary for a free and stable society. In other words, I contend that without an effective wealth transfer tax, it will be difficult to ensure political rights and basic freedoms, thus leaving the libertarian minimal state in peril of collapse. (shrink)

Preface Phillip R. Sloan, Gerald McKenny, Kathleen Eggleson pp. xiii-xviii In November of 2009, the University of Notre Dame hosted the conference “Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God.‘ Sponsored primarily by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at Notre Dame, and the Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest project within the Vatican Pontifical... 1. Introduction: Restructuring an Interdisciplinary Dialogue Phillip R. Sloan pp. 1-32 Almost exactly fifty years before the Notre Dame conference, the (...) world’s largest centenary commemoration of Darwin’s legacy was held at nearby University of Chicago. This event, organized by a committee spearheaded by University of Chicago anthropologist Sol Tax, drew nearly 2,500 registrants. In attendance were the primary leaders... Part 1. Nature 2. Evolution through Developmental Change: How Alterations in Development Cause Evolutionary Changes in Anatomy Scott F. Gilbert pp. 35-60 For the past half-century, the mechanisms of evolution have been explained by the fusion of genetics and evolutionary biology called “the Modern Synthesis.‘ The tenets of the Modern Synthesis have been generally formulated as such: 1. There is genetic variation within the population. 2. There is competition... 3. The Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms: A New Perspective Stuart A. Newman pp. 61-89 The Modern Evolutionary Synthesis, based on Charles Darwin’s concept of natural selection in conjunction with a genetic theory of inheritance in a population-based framework, has been, for more than six decades, the dominant scientific perspective for explaining the diversity of living organisms. In recent years, however, with the growth... 4. The Evolvability of Organic Forms: Possible, Likely, and Unlikely Change from the Perspective of Evolutionary Developmental Biology Alessandro Minelli pp. 90-115 Confronted with the extraordinary diversity of animal form, we can ask questions about function and adaptation. How does this animal move? How does it feed? How does it defend itself from its enemies? But we can also ask questions about development, reproduction, and heredity. What mechanisms produce these forms? How are these... 5. Accident, Adaptation, and Teleology in Aristotle and Darwinism David J. Depew pp. 116-143 Charles Darwin framed the Origin of Species to meet criteria for inductive science set out by John Herschel in his Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Accordingly, he was distraught when he learned that Herschel, to whom he had sent a copy of his newly published book, was not... 6. The Game of Life Implies Both Teleonomy and Teleology Gennaro Auletta, Ivan Colagè, Paolo D’Ambrosio pp. 144-164 The present contribution is mainly aimed at suggesting the importance of teleonomy and teleology as explanatory mechanisms in biology in the light of recent achievements in the field, and at showing that they play an actual and relevant role in the realm of life. The issue of finality in biology still provokes lively debates in the... Part 2. Humanity 7. Humanity’s Origins Bernard Wood pp. 167-181 One of Charles Darwin’s many achievements is that he began the process of converting the Tree of Life from a religious metaphor into a biological reality. All types of living organisms, be they animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, or viruses, are at the end of twigs that reach the surface of the Tree of Life, and all the types of organisms... 8. Darwin’s Evolutionary Ethics: The Empirical and Normative Justifications Robert J. Richards pp. 182-200 In the increasingly secular atmosphere of the nineteenth century, intellectuals grew wary of the idea that nature had any moral authority. In an earlier age, one might have looked upon the dispositions of nature as divinely sanctioned, and thus one could call upon natural law to ground moral judgment. Certain behaviors, for instance, might have... 9. Crossing the Milvian Bridge: When Do Evolutionary Explanations of Belief Debunk Belief? Paul E. Griffiths, John S. Wilkins pp. 201-231 Two traditional targets for evolutionary skepticism are religion and morality. Evolutionary skeptical arguments against religious belief are continuous with earlier genetic arguments against religion, such as that implicit in David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. Evolutionary arguments are also... 10. Questioning the Zoological Gaze: Darwinian Epistemology and Anthropology Phillip R. Sloan pp. 232-266 This quotation from Darwin’s Descent of Man illuminates an under-explored issue in Darwin’s work---not the issue of evolutionary ethics itself, but the epistemology of experience assumed in his work, and the consequences of his application of this “zoological gaze‘ to human beings. I will term this epistemological stance in this chapter “natural historical... Part 3. God 11. Evolution and Catholic Faith John O’Callaghan pp. 269-298 To begin to examine the relation of orthodox Catholic Christian faith to evolutionary theory and the question of human origins, consider words of the fourth pope, St. Clement: Let us fix our gaze on the Father and Creator of the whole world, and let us hold on to his peace and blessings, his splendid and surpassing... 12. After Darwin, Aquinas: A Universe Created and Evolving William E. Carroll pp. 299-337 At the 2000 Jubilee Session for scientists, held at the Vatican in May of that year, Archbishop Józef Życiński offered an eloquent assessment of contemporary discourse on the relationship between the natural sciences and theology. He ended his address with the comment that what is needed today is a new Thomas Aquinas. I remember... 13. Evolutionary Theism and the Emergent Universe Józef Życiński pp. 338-354 The 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species has been celebrated in the context of an animated debate concerning both scientific and philosophical issues implied by the theory of evolution.1 One finds a deep diversity of attitudes, both methodological and semantic, in the current debates on evolutionary... 14. Beyond Separation or Synthesis: Christ and Evolution as Theodrama Celia Deane-Drummond pp. 355-380 The fervor with which popular discourse on science and religion has continued to bubble up in the anniversary year celebrating Darwin’s achievements shows that the publically perceived conflict between science and religion will not go away. Academic discussion on such matters is therefore not just peripheral to cultural concerns but takes... Part 4. Past and Future Prospects 15. Imagining a World without Darwin Peter J. Bowler pp. 383-403 What would have happened if Charles Darwin had not lived to write On the Origin of Species? Perhaps his bad health caused the early death he feared, or maybe he fell overboard while on the voyage of the Beagle. Would the world have still experienced the Darwinian Revolution under another name, or would the history of science, and... 16. What Future for Darwinism? Jean Gayon pp. 404-423 What future for Darwinism? I will propose some criteria for exploring this question in the domains of both evolutionary biology and the human sciences. Do not expect me to tell you where we will stand thirty years from now. It will be enough to identify a few general tendencies. For the sake of brevity, I will not devote a preamble to explain... Contributors pp. 424-430. (shrink)

Distributive justice concerns the fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. Opposition to higher rates of taxation, or even existing levels of taxation, are often made on grounds that such taxes are unfair burdens. This fairness argument can be given a number of further, more specific, formulations. Libertarians like Robert Nozick, for example, argue that taxation of income is unfair because it violates individual rights. Libertarians invoke an entitlement argument which presumes that the appropriate baseline of property (...) rights is pretax income. Others take issue with specific policies that are supported by taxation, such as welfare provisions, and argue that welfare reform is necessary as tax burdens are only legitimate when they satisfy some form of reciprocity thesis. In this review article I critically assess these arguments. The recent publication of The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice, and The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citizenship help shed some light on each of these different arguments that are often invoked in defence of tax cuts. These three books are a welcome addition to debates about distributive justice as they help bridge the gap between normative theory and public policy. In addition to raising doubts about the arguments that taxation is unfair, I examine themes that raise important questions about taxation and justice- private property, welfare reform and inheritance. An examination of these themes should make it clear that the real challenge facing justice-theorists is to take scarcity seriously and thus I emphasis the shortcomings of simply endorsing a ‘cost-blind’ rights-oriented conception of justice. Such a conception of justice currently dominates debates in normative political theory. (shrink)

Taxation is more than one thing. Taxes can be levied in various ways on various things, with varying effects on a culture and an economy, and raising different challenges of justification.

Chris Renwick’s recent research into the fate of William Beveridge’s attempt to establish social biology as the foundational social science at the London School of Economics is history at its best by uncovering a moment in the past when decisions were taken comparable to ones being taken today. In this case, the issues concern the political and scientific foundations of the welfare state. By connecting Beveridge’s original reasoning to recruit Lancelot Hogben for the Rockefeller-sponsored social biology chair with his later (...) formative role in the design of the British welfare state, we are able to witness an alternative vision of the left, one associated with the Fabian movement, which proceeded independently of its Marxist cousin. The Fabian focus on taxing “inheritance” in the broadest sense remains relevant to how we think about the human condition in an era when capitalism has come to encompass the ownership of genetic material. (shrink)

This article examines John Stuart Mill’s influential proposal of how to tax wealth transfers. According to Mill, every person should be free to bequeath but not to receive bequest. Mill proposed an upper limit on how much each person could receive from wealth transfers. We discuss three objections against this proposal. The nonseparability objection holds that it is not possible to separate the freedom to give from the freedom to receive. The objection from private property holds that private property includes (...) an unlimited right to dispose of one’s assets and that this right is violated under Mill’s scheme. The objection from incentives holds that Mill’s scheme would have negative effects on people’s willingness to work and save. We argue that these objections can be met and that taxing bequeathed wealth according to Mill’s scheme is more just and more efficient compared to systems that rely less on wealth transfer taxation. (shrink)

Jean-Guillaume-César-Alexandre-Hippolyte de Colins (1783-1859), a Belgian baron who lived mainly in Paris, sought to develop a position—rational socialism—intermediate between the extremes of full capitalism (with only private property) and full communism (with only collective property). All persons fully own themselves and the artifactual wealth that they produce, and they are entitled to an equal share of the natural resources and of the assets inherited from previous generations. Gifts and bequests are to be subject to heavy taxation (although at less than (...) 100% of their value, for efficiency reasons). Natural resources are subject to a rent-tax. A warning about the following reading: Colins writes in many places as if he held that an unrestricted right to make gifts and bequests is both necessary for efficient social functioning and required by justice. His ultimate view, however, is that efficient social functioning requires only some kind of weak (partially restricted) right to make gifts and bequest, and that justice does not require any such right. More specifically, he holds that justice requires that gifts and bequests be taxed as much as compatible with efficient social functioning. (shrink)

International tax competition undermines states’ capacity for redistributive taxation. It is thus problematic from the point of view of both cosmopolitan and internationalist theories of justice. This article examines the proposal of a fiscal policy constraint that prohibits tax policies if they are strategically motivated and harmful to effective fiscal self-determination internationally. I argue that we should opt for a more robust, preference-independent mechanism to prevent harmful tax competition instead. States should, as a matter of justice, accept global minimum tax (...) rates on mobile tax bases. (shrink)

What does it mean to think of philosophy in the condition of modernism, in which its relation to its past and future has become a relevant problem? This book argues that the writings of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard are best understood as responsive (each in their own way) to such questions. Through detailed analysis of these authors' most influential texts, Stephen Mulhall reorients our sense of the philosophical work each text aims to accomplish, engendering a critical dialogue between them from (...) which the elements of a new conception of philosophy might emerge. (shrink)

Thomas Pogge's Global Resources Dividend relies on a flat tax on the use of natural resources to fund the eradication of world poverty. Hillel Steiner's Global Fund taxes the full rental value of owned natural resources and distributes the proceeds equally. The paper compares the Dividend and the Fund and defends the Global Share, a novel proposal that taxes either use or ownership, does so (when possible) progressively, and distributes the revenue according to a prioritarian rather than a sufficientarian or (...) egalitarian principle. (shrink)

This manuscript proposes that tax avoidance can be better understood and mitigated as a sustainability problem. Tax avoidance is not just a financial problem for tax authorities, but one that erodes critical common spaces necessary for the smooth functioning of regulatory compliance, organizational integrity, and society. Defining tax avoidance as a sustainability problem offers a broader and more holistic understanding of the organizational and societal consequences of tax avoidance behavior. Sustainability is also a mature and legitimized concept that can readily (...) incorporate taxation. A variety of established sustainability metrics have the capacity to incorporate anti-tax avoidance measures or publicize firms that engage in fair tax practices. This manuscript concludes that integrating sustainability principles, in conjunction with important extant work on corporate social responsibility and taxation, can advance the goals of decreasing the occurrence and acceptability of tax avoidance. (shrink)

Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the “democratization of tax enforcement,” by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the (...) letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. (shrink)

This study used a national sample of professionals and a questionnaire containing equitable relief vignettes to explore whether the new equitable relief subset of the revised innocent spouse rules is helpful to the IRS when making relief decisions. The study also addressed the ethical and gender issues associated with equitable relief innocent spouse cases. The results suggested that several equitable relief factors are useful as discriminators in the relief decision. The results also demonstrated that the recognition of an ethical issue (...) and perceptions of moral intensity affected the decision to grant relief in innocent spouse situations. Finally, women subjects were more ethical and more sympathetic toward the victim in an innocent spouse situation than were their male counterparts. These findings have numerous personal and societal implications for businesses, IRS agents, CPAs, and attorneys, as well as other nations wishing to reform their tax structures while assessing the tradeoff between equity and tax revenue generation. (shrink)

With the advent of CRISPR gene-editing technology, designer babies have become a reality. Françoise Baylis insists that scientists alone cannot decide the terms of this new era in human evolution. Members of the public, with diverse interests and perspectives, must have a role in determining our future as a species.

This chapter examines the nature and normative significance of taxation. In particular, it identifies and explores two central normative questions: (1) What tax arrangements should a state or society put into place? (2) How should a citizen or taxpayer relate to an existing system? In thinking through these and relate questions, the discussion also critically engages with the broadly Rawlsian view of taxation defended by Murphy and Nagel in The Myth of Ownership.

Population obesity and associated morbidities pose significant public health and economic burdens in the United Kingdom, United States, and globally. As a response, public health initiatives often seek to change individuals’ unhealthy behavior, with the dual aims of improving their health and conserving health care resources. One such initiative—taxes on sugar‐sweetened beverages (SSB)—has sparked considerable ethical debate. Prominent in the debate are arguments seeking to demonstrate the supposed impermissibility of SSB taxes and similar policies on the grounds that they interfere (...) with individuals’ freedom and autonomy. Commentators have often assumed that a policy intended to restrict or change private individuals’ consumption behavior will necessarily curtail freedom and, as a corollary, will undermine individuals’ autonomy with respect to their consumption choices. Yet this assumption involves a conceptual mistake. To address the misunderstanding, it’s necessary to attend to the differences between negative liberty, freedom of options, and autonomy. Ultimately, concerns about negative liberty, freedom, and autonomy do not provide strong grounds for opposing SSB taxes. (shrink)

Discussion of a metaphysical sense of 'inheritance' and cognate notions relevant to fundamentality.