Taxes, Property, Justice
The distribution of pretax income has no moral significance; therefore the distribution of burdens on pretax income can have no moral significance, either. So traditional doctrines of vertical and horizontal equity in taxation, which are the main focus of the “fairness” branch of taxation policy, are fundamentally misguided. To say that a just tax is a flat tax or, for that matter, a progressive tax, is to offer an answer to a meaningless question. Further, justice in taxation is not an independent moral issue. A tax scheme will be just if it finds its place in a just set of economic and legal institutions. Economic and legal institution, as a system, will be just depending on how well they secure certain values—values such as liberty, welfare, opportunity, and personal responsibility. Different political theories assign different weights to these values, and they interpret them in different ways, so abandoning the traditional way of thinking about tax justice leaves open a full range of views, from left to right, if you like, on what a just overall economic system, taxation included, will look like. In particular, it leaves open what the rate structure of the best tax scheme will be.
