Politics, Taxation, and the Rule of Law

by Racheter, Donald P.; Wagner, Richard E.

• ISBN13: 9781402071546
• ISBN10: 140207154X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-07-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

The essays in this book treat the relationships among politics, taxation, and the rule of law. A central tenet of democratic ideology is that taxation is something that we choose to do to ourselves, rather than being something that is imposed on us by some ruler. The basic ideology of the American constitutional founding is that government is not the source of our rights of person and property. To the contrary, government is something we establish with our prior rights of person and property to preserve and protect those rights. While it is possible to articulate some intellectual notions about good government and appropriate taxation, it does not follow from the mere fact of this articulation that actual taxation works as articulated. Taxation may be a necessary means of preserving and protecting rights of person and property, but it might also operate in various ways to undermine, abridge, and erode those rights. The central tenet of democratic ideology, a tenet that is reflected thoroughly in the American constitutional founding, is that it is people's prior right to their property that limits the reach of government. This ideology rejects without a second thought any notion that government defines the limits of people's right to property. Yet democratic practice may well contradict and subvert democratic ideology, though the relationship between practice and ideology is not so simple as one being dominant over the other.

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	ix
List of Contributors	xi
Preface	xiii
The Constitutional Framework for Democratic Taxation	1	(8)
Donald P. Racheter
Richard E. Wagner
Self-Ownership, Taxation, and Democracy: A Philosophical-Constitutional Perspective	9	(24)
Eric Mack
Property, Taxation, and the Budgetary Commons	33	(16)
Richard E. Wagner
Taxpayers Rights and the Fiscal Constitution	49	(32)
Gary Wolfram
Referendum, Redistribution, and Tax Exemption: A Rent-Seeking Theory of Direct Democracy	81	(20)
Gary Anderson
Public Choices and Fiscal Means: Analyzing Taxes as Collective Outcomes	101	(22)
Walter Hettich
Stanley L. Winer
Excise Taxation and Interest Group Politics	123	(22)
Randall G. Holcombe
Taxation through Litigation	145	(22)
Robert A. Levy
Explaining the Persistent Growth in Tax Complexity	167	(18)
James L. Payne
Site-Value Taxation and the Rule of Law	185	(18)
Fred Foldvary
Zoning, Smart Growth, and Regulatory Taxation	203	(22)
Samuel Staley
Emerging Property Rights, Command-and-Control Regulation, And the Disinterest in Environmental Taxation	225	(18)
Bruce Yandle
Index	243