Rawls and Taxation
Ownership, Progressivity and Publicity.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/eps.9.1.6964Keywords:
Justice, taxation, public reason, progressive taxation, fiscal theory, public philosophyAbstract
John Rawls’s theory of justice is strikingly silent on taxation, despite its centrality to the maintenance of background justice. This paper argues that taxation must be seen not as a technical instrument of redistribution, but as a constitutive element of the basic structure, shaping property rights and distributive outcomes. Building on Murphy and Nagel’s institutional account of ownership (2002) and Sugin’s reading of Rawlsian justice (2004), I show that fiscal design is indispensable to securing fair equality of opportunity and the fair value of political liberties. Against the “narrow view” of public reason (Freeman 2003; Quong 2004), I contend that taxation belongs among the constitutional essentials and must satisfy the principle of publicity. While Rawls’s textual remarks occasionally allow proportional taxes, the internal logic of justice as fairness implies progressivity, necessary to prevent dynastic concentrations of wealth and to sustain reciprocity and legitimacy in a well-ordered society.
References
Avi-Yonah, R. S., Sartori, N., & Marian, O. (2011). Global perspectives on income taxation law. Oxford University Press.
Barry, B. (1973). John Rawls and the priority of liberty. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 2(3), 274–290. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264913
Cohen, J. (2003). For a democratic society. In S. Freeman (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (p. 86–138). Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, S. (2003). Introduction: John Rawls—An overview. In S. Freeman (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (p. 1–61). Cambridge University Press.
Hart, H. L. A. (1973). Rawls on liberty and its priority. The University of Chicago Law Review, 40(3), 534–555.
Larmore, C. (2003). Public Reason. In S. Freeman (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Rawls (p. 368–393). Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, L., & Nagel, T. (2002). The myth of ownership: Taxes and justice. Oxford University Press.
O’Neill, M. (2007). Death and taxes: Social justice and the politics of inheritance tax. Renewal, 15(4), 61–79.
O’Neill, M. (2008). What should egalitarians believe? Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36(2), 119–156. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2008.00132.x
O’Neill, M. (2009). Liberty, equality and property-owning democracy. Journal of Social Philosophy, 40(3), 379–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.2009.00443.x
O’Neill, M. (2012). Introduction. In M. O’Neill & T. Williamson (Eds.), Property-owning democracy: Rawls and beyond (p. 75–100). Wiley-Blackwell.
O’Neill, M., & White, S. (2019). James Meade, public ownership, and the idea of a citizens’ trust. International Journal of Public Policy, 15(1–2), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJPP.2019.099724
Pedersen, J. (2021). Distributive justice and taxation. Routledge.
Pogge, T. (2007). John Rawls: His life and theory of justice (M. Kosch, Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Quong, J. (2004). The scope of public reason. Political Studies, 52(2), 233–250.
Rawls, J. (1999). A Theory of Justice (Rev. ed.). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (2005). Political Liberalism (Expanded ed.). Columbia University Press.
Scanlon, T. M. (2003). Rawls on justification. In S. Freeman (Ed.), The Cambridge companion to Rawls (p. 139–167). Cambridge University Press.
Schwartzman, M. (2011). The sincerity of public reason. Journal of Political Philosophy, 19(4), 375–398.
Sedmak, C., & Gaisbauer, H. P. (2015). Fiscal justice and justified trust. In H. P. Gaisbauer, G. Schweiger, & C. Sedmak (Eds.), Philosophical explorations of justice and taxation: National and global issues (p. 17–33). Springer.
Sugin, L. (1998). Tax expenditure analysis and constitutional decisions. Fordham Law Review, 67(2), 471–492.
Sugin, L. (2004). Theories of distributive justice and limitations on taxation: What Rawls demands from tax systems. Fordham Law Review, 73(5), 1991–2014.
Sugin, L. (2016). Invisible taxpayers. Georgetown Law Journal, 104(1), 617–675.
Taylor, R. S. (2003). Rawls’s defense of the priority of liberty: A Kantian reconstruction. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 31(3), 246–271. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3558006
Vallier, K. (2022). Public justification. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter2022 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/justification-public/
Van Parijs, P. (2003). Difference principles. In S. Freeman (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (p. 200–240). Cambridge University Press.
Verbeek, B. (2015). “You did not build that road”—Reciprocity, benefits, opportunities and taxing the extremely rich. In H. P. Gaisbauer, G. Schweiger, & C. Sedmak (Eds.), Philosophical explorations of justice and taxation: National and global issues. Springer.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Edoardo Vignocchi
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
