Thursday, June 14, 2018

Introduction to Tax Policy Theory

Every year I make this primer, an Introduction to Tax Policy Theory, available to my tax policy students (and otherwise send it whenever I'm asked for an overview look at tax policy basics), so I decided to post it on SSRN. It is not a published piece but may be some day. Here is the description:
Taxation involves the compulsory transfer of resources among members of society. Tax policy is concerned with how societies carry out taxation. That is a technical and legal question, but it is inescapably a political, social, and cultural one as well. To study tax policy is to engage simultaneously with the existential philosophical foundations of taxation: why and how societies tax. This introduction to tax policy theory presents an overview of tax policy discourse. The goal is to outline a working framework for reflection and analysis to examine the ways in which current assumptions and approaches require further development.  
Part I asks why we tax, and posits state-building, internal management, and negotiated expansion as three broad goals. Part II asks how we should tax, and examines the conventional frameworks of equity, efficiency, and administrative capacity as the three guiding principles for most tax policy analysis. Part III concludes.
And here is the brief TOC:

I.          Why Do We Tax?        
A.         State Building
B.         Internal Management
C.         Negotiated Expansion
II.         Normative Foundations          
A.         Equity
B.         Economic Efficiency
C.         Administrative Capacity
III.        Conclusion

Input as to what is missing is welcome; this is a work in progress. 

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