Taxation and Justice

«In this world», Benjamin Franklin pronounced in a letter, «nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes». This essay takes as its premise the need to accept the inevitable and proceeds to discuss the principles that should govern an equitable System of income taxation, focusing especially on proportionality and reciprocity. After examining a number of attractive schemes (that might include a moderate element of effective gradation, as even most ‘degressive’ variants of the flat-tax do), the essay shows why ambitious designs for redistributive taxation are not likely to produce the intended results and how they threaten to impede economic, technological, and even cultural progress.