•  343
    The mirage of mark-to-market: distributive justice and alternatives to capital taxation
    with Nick Cowen
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 25 (2): 211-234. 2022.
    Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are th…Read more
  •  9
    The distributive justice literature has recently formulated several tax proposals, with limitarians or property-owning democrats proposing new or higher taxes on wealth or capital income intended to decrease the growing wealth gap. This essay joins this debate on inequality and redistributive taxation through the lens of the “benefit principle for public policy.” This principle says that specific rules and institutions are acceptable to the extent that they create benefits for all individuals in…Read more
  •  8
    The mirage of mark-to-market: distributive justice and alternatives to capital taxation
    with Nick Cowen
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 25 (2): 211-234. 2022.
    Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one beneficiary to another through sale or gifts. Are th…Read more
  •  2
    Tax Uniformity as a Requirement of Justice
    Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 33 (1): 59-83. 2020.
    Barbara Fried takes the view that uniform taxation—that is, a single rate applicable to all income levels—cannot be defended on any grounds of justice. She goes further by saying that, of all possible rate structures, it might be “the hardest one”? to ground in “a”? theory of fairness. Using the contractarian-constitutional perspective advanced by John Rawls and James Buchanan, this article argues that tax uniformity can be seen as a requirement of justice. After modelling how the political worl…Read more