Tax justice and redistribution: ethical foundations and elements for an empirical diagnosis.

Authors

ALIBERT Arnaud
PERCEBOIS Jacques

Publication date

1999

Publication type

Thesis

Summary The purpose of this paper, entitled <>, is to contribute to the debate on the determination of a fair tax by articulating the redistributive dimension of the tax to the principles of justice present in normative economics. The analysis shows that the theory of taxation according to taxpayers' ability to pay is the only theory able to integrate the elements of ethical reflection in its definition of compulsory levies. However, its political concretization requires an appeal to a principle of justice. However, from the plurality of normative principles, no overriding redistributive criterion emerges that can be directly used by the tax decision-maker. To get out of this indetermination, the study focuses on the positive reality of the practice of fairness in French taxation. It shows that the principle of equality before the tax and the principle of equality through the tax are the two principles that constitute the ethical reference for the public decision-maker. They are supposed to structure his concrete choices of tax measures. An examination of the compulsory levies borne by French households in 1999 shows that this hypothesis is not borne out.

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