The moral force of the benefit principle

Emmanuel Voyiakis

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: What gives the benefit principle its moral appeal as an idea of tax justice? And what can count as a benefit for that purpose? My claim is that we can trace the moral force of various versions of the principle to five ideas: individual justification, causal feedback, reciprocity, opposable valuation and non-objectionable baseline. I develop those ideas into an account of the moral permissibility of benefit-based taxation, and explain how that account addresses problems about the quantification and valuation of benefits and the relationship between benefit and the justice of the background distribution.

Keywords: benefit; taxation; distribution; justification; permissibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2025-05-16
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe
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Published in Economics and Philosophy, 16, May, 2025. ISSN: 0266-2671

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