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Traditional analyses of tax justice demand that the distribution of tax burdens satisfy criteria of vertical and horizontal equity–like cases should be treated alike and relevantly different cases should be treated differently. Various criteria for relevant differences have been proposed, drawing on ideas such as ability to pay and taxation in proportion to benefit. All these analyses suffer from the fundamental flaw of treating pretax income as a morally significant baseline. This mistake can partly be traced to a prevailing “everyday libertarianism” according to which our legal property rights simply protect what we are independently morally entitled to; this view is incoherent.

Gives an overview of tax incentive policies, paying much attention to the role played by the government in light of the special tax measures for corporation. Also, the tax burden of the corporate sector is clarified with special reference to tax incentives.

Shows how the Federalists responded to the Antifederalist objections to a stronger national government in the “fiscal‐military” sphere, thereby creating an understanding of the kind of state that was proper to American conditions. In the debate over ratification of the US Constitution there was little discussion about the exact way in which the Federalists intended to organize the revenue administration, but nevertheless, it is the argument of this chapter that with the important exception of the assumption of the state debts, the general outline of Hamiltonian public finance was in place in 1787, and widely shared by the supporters of the Constitution. Thus, the idea that the least oppressive tax was also the most productive, the claim that adoption of the Constitution would mean a change in the structure of taxation from direct to indirect taxes and a reliance on the impost (customs duties), and the ideal of the federal government as a “waterfront state” hardly noticed by the people, were all among the most important points made in Federalist rhetoric on the fiscal powers of the Constitution. In the ratifying debate, the Federalists presented a solution to the equation of how to create a sufficiently powerful government without making unacceptable demands on society: the federal government had the right to mobilize the full resources of society at will, but in peacetime it would keep a very low profile while assuming the payment of the union's debts and the cost of defense using money raised by taxation. This federal assumption of expenses that had earlier been carried by the states, and the mode of raising the taxes to pay for it ensured that overall taxation would not increase, as the Antifederalists claimed, but would become less burdensome to the majority of the people.

Offers brief sketches of the institutionalization of the military and fiscal powers granted by the US Constitution, and of the uses made of them by the Federalists in the 1790s. Gives an outline of the fiscal and financial policy of the Federalists, thereby assessing Alexander Hamilton's claim to have restored public credit while reducing the tax pressure on the citizens. Also looks at the fate of the Federalist program after the Federalists had lost power to the Jeffersonian Republicans.

Deal with the tax issues on estate transfer, bequests and gifts, which are considered to be appropriate objects of taxation. The structural features of the Japanese inheritance and gifts taxes are explored in an historical perspective, and the role of property transfer taxes in affecting the tax burden and redistribution effects is considered.

Provides an overview of Japan's tax development, dating back to the pre‐war period with a brief explanation of general characteristics that are thought to be of basic importance to understand the Japanese tax system.

One of the chief criticisms of Austrian rule voiced by Risorgimento propagandists and echoed by subsequent historians is that it was fiscally exploitative of Venetia. This chapter questions the extent to which the Austrians set out to impose heavy tax burdens on the region. While not investigating all aspects of fiscal policy in detail, it provides a brief survey of the attitudes of the Habsburg bureaucracy in Venetia, and a detailed case study of the operation of the widely-resented poll tax.

This chapter reviews what has happened to welfare spending and inequality in the OECD countries since 1980. A central question is whether the heightened international competition involved in globalization is compromising the nation state's ability to fund welfare spending.

This study documents four key facts about informal economic activities: (1) the size of the informal sector varies greatly across nations; (2) this size is strongly correlated with economic development, the tax burden, and the rule of law; (3) the informal sector emphasizes small‐scale, self‐financed, and unskilled labour- intensive economic activities; and (4), while financial markets are generally segmented along formal/informal lines in developing nations, there is no compelling evidence that this is true for labour markets. The chapter reviews the existing theoretical literature on the informal sector and describe a simple model with a trade‐off between tax evasion and access to formal sources of outside finance that is consistent with much of the existing evidence. Finally, the study discusses the challenges associated with measuring informal sector assets.

What did Scotland contribute in terms of financial support for the war effort, and did the Scots pay their ‘fair share’ of taxes in the 1790s? This chapter addresses the question of Scotland’s relative financial contribution to the war effort, by first looking at attitudes to taxation, and then Scotland’s actual contribution to war time finances. The main arguments presented here is that attitudes to taxation in Scotland focused more on individual cases such as the Coal tax, than on the overall tax burden and Scotland’s relative contribution to war-time finances, and that the contemporary view that Scotland was lightly taxed when compared to England, is largely supported by the surviving evidence on tax revenues.

This chapter combines a full analysis of the Parliamentary Papers archive, giving an overview of all chamber parliamentary lobby activity, with detailed assessments of the main campaigns. It shows growth of lobbying in the mid-nineteenth century and through the twentieth century. It shows the frame-changing effect of the Corn Law abolition as a relaunch of the chamber brand. The extended tensions over free trade and tariffs are given new insights. A crucial new analysis is given of chamber cooperation with government in disseminating consular information after 1917—arguably the first example of corporatism in the UK. Resistance to municipal enterprise and high local taxes (the Rates) form major themes of the twentieth century. Modern lobbies have focused on partnering government, but attacking over-regulation.

This chapter evaluates the outcomes that were of such grave concern to local residents and township officials prior to the project's construction, using publicly available data to determine the effects it had on crime rates, tax burdens, and property values. It reveals that white suburban residents generally oppose the location of affordable housing developments within their communities, at least those intended for poor families as opposed to the elderly, and that such opposition is at least partially rooted in racial and class prejudice. Apart from prejudice, however, the chapter also argues that suburbanites have legitimate practical reasons to be skeptical about the influence of “public housing” on their communities, given the lamentable record of the projects built throughout the country during the 1950s and 1960s. Both skepticism and prejudice were evident in the rhetoric employed by Mount Laurel residents in opposing the construction of the Ethel Lawrence Homes in their township. Although it is doubtful that many of these local critics were well grounded in the social science literature, there are nonetheless defensible theoretical and substantive reasons to expect social problems to follow from the insertion of a 100% affordable housing project into a white, affluent suburban setting.

Under the good lordship of the kings of Scots the liberty of Tynedale played a self-assured and potent role as a focus for the organisation of government, loyalty and community. Yet fourteenth-century Tynedale inhabited a very different universe. Indeed, during the Anglo-Scottish hostilities from 1296 and largely, though not exclusively, because of them, the liberty's position on the map of power, identities, and allegiances was reconfigured in multiple ways. This chapter shows that the liberty's owners and tenants might vigilantly defend its rights, and that the English crown often accepted that local governance was a matter for the liberty-owners or their officers. If control of forfeitures is ‘the “acid test” of palatine privilege’, the liberty fell short of this touchstone. But it belonged with Cheshire, Durham and Hexhamshire to that select group of liberties normally shielded from the growing tax-burden imposed by the crown on the rest of England, so that in this respect its privileges arguably became more distinctive and important. Lawsuits did go from the liberty to the royal courts, though apparently with no regularity; and there is concrete evidence that its own judicial system was valued by the ‘community’. It is also shown that the liberty was sometimes instrumental in structuring patterns of military recruitment and service, and — more significantly — in mobilising collective political action, notably in 1314–15 and around 1370.

The growing division about personal responsibility has become the basis for partisan conflicts and policy battles involving appropriate tax levels and how much various groups should pay, welfare eligibility, government regulation of access to abortion, how bankruptcy law can be used, and who should be responsible for individuals having access to health care, to name but a few examples.