The Language of Taxation: Ideology Masquerading as Science

32 Pages Posted: 12 Feb 2016 Last revised: 19 Feb 2016

See all articles by Richard E. Wagner

Richard E. Wagner

George Mason University - Department of Economics; George Mason University - Mercatus Center

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: February 12, 2016

Abstract

The economic analysis of taxation contains two disparate strands of theorizing. One strand is a scientific strand that seeks to explain the rhyme and reason of the pattern of taxation that governments create. The other strand is a normative or exhortatory strand that seeks to instruct governments as to how they should extract taxes from the population. There is no good reason why a theorist can’t contribute to both strands, only not at the same time because the position of political partisan requires different theoretical formulations than does the position of political observer. Yet the two distinct roles and their associated formulations are often confounded, with the result being that the language of taxation often entails commingling between ideological claims and scientifically based claims. After characterizing these two visions of tax theory, the remainder of this essay disentangles some of the conflicts between ideology and science with respect to taxation, particularly as these apply to personal income taxation and to commodity taxation.

The accepted paper version of this paper can be found at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=3170043

Keywords: taxes as political prices; fiscal politics; tax ideology; fiscal discrimination; corrective taxation; redistributive taxation

JEL Classification: D60, D70, H20, H40

Suggested Citation

Wagner, Richard E., The Language of Taxation: Ideology Masquerading as Science (February 12, 2016). GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 16-01, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2731508 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2731508

Richard E. Wagner (Contact Author)

George Mason University - Department of Economics ( email )

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