What Political Philosophy Should Learn from Economics about Taxation

Abstract

The modern economics literature provides three approaches to the analysis of taxation: one focused on the optimal balancing of a variety of normative considerations, a second focused on the relationship between taxation and (democratic) political processes, and a third focused on the possibility of constitutional limitations on the power to tax. This chapter outlines each of these approaches before discussing their compatibility and their implications for a more general normative political philosophy of taxation. It is argued that any coherent account of taxation in political philosophy should account for its non-ideal nature and draw on elements of all three economic approaches.