Justice and the tax system. A view from the British perspective

Abstract

This article argues the Chilean doctrine addresses the issue of tax justice from a triple perspective: economic, philosophical and legal. Yet, it mistrusts the possibilities of the latter to construct genuine solutions to the complex problems facing tax justice. Based on that evidence, the author explores the development of tax justice in the Anglo-Saxon world, especially in England, by retracing the way philosophers, economists and jurists approached its most decisive elements. To that end, and after outlining the problem and the analytical perspective of the article, he reviews the notion of tax justice in classical liberal doctrines, the justification for imposing taxes and the state's objectives in doing so, the concept of taxation, commutative justice and distributive justice, the added fiscal purposes of taxation, and the principle of equality as a normative expression of justice in taxation. The author concludes that, although the issue of tax justice is approached from this triple perspective in the Anglo-Saxon world and a way that is very different from continental law, legal doctrine has been able to debate these complex legal problems successfully.