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The "sinews of the state" : historical justifications for taxes and tax law
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Snape, John (2017) The "sinews of the state" : historical justifications for taxes and tax law. In: Philosophical Foundations of Tax Law. Philosophical Foundations of Law . Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 9-33. ISBN 9780198798439
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Official URL: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/980872470
Abstract
In order to analyse the nature of taxes and of tax law and the justifications for them, this chapter focuses on the purposes for which levies in general have historically been imposed. Three interwoven arguments are made in the context of four ideals of societal order: 'the feudal realm'; 'the absolutist state'; 'the parliamentary state'; and 'the administrative state'. The three arguments are as follows: first, that historically-specific ideals go a long way to shaping the purposes of levies imposed under different social and political orders; secondly, that the nature and scope of viable purposes is a function of the social and political relations created by those orders; and, thirdly, that it is the presence or absence of a political justification for the chosen purposes that affirms or denies both the status of a levy as a tax and the categorisation of tax law as public law. Some weight is placed throughout the chapter on the nature and ambition of the purposes concerned. The three arguments draw attention to levies imposed under historically different types of social and political order in England. Rather than suggesting that each societal order follows on the heels of the other, the argument is that, within each ideal, particular purposes for levies predominate. It follows that a residue of ideals remains powerful even when one societal order is supplanted by another. It is thus that different ambitions for tax law are highlighted and that the modern conception of tax law as public law is shown to be both historically contingent and philosophically contestable.
Item Type: | Book Item | ||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Law | ||||
Series Name: | Philosophical Foundations of Law | ||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||
Place of Publication: | Oxford | ||||
ISBN: | 9780198798439 | ||||
Book Title: | Philosophical Foundations of Tax Law | ||||
Official Date: | 16 February 2017 | ||||
Dates: |
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Page Range: | pp. 9-33 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||
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