How Employers and Conservatives Shaped the Modern Tax State

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez and Cathie Jo Martin ()
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Alexander Hertel-Fernandez: Columbia University
Cathie Jo Martin: Boston University

A chapter in Worlds of Taxation, 2018, pp 17-48 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Coordinated nations with large welfare states rely on comparatively regressive “mass tax” systems, whereas liberal countries with limited welfare states historically embraced more progressive “class tax” systems. This chapter explores the origins of these paradoxical strategies. It suggests that “mass” and “class” tax strategies come from different models of revenue policymaking, organized around the logic of state-building versus crisis mobilization. A state-building model, which produces the mass tax, transpires in countries with strong political institutions for consensual policymaking, and includes support by business and the right, whereas a crisis-mobilization model, which produces the class tax, occurs in countries with few institutions for consensual policymaking. This argument is supported with quantitative data from 1900 to 2000 and case studies of the United States and Denmark.

Keywords: State-building model; Crisis-mobilization model; Multipartism; Two-party system; American revenue system; Danish revenue system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-319-90263-0_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-90263-0_2

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