Fairness in Taxation: Exploring the Principles

W. Bruce Wrigley is a Toronto-based bank treasury advisor.

This volume, the first in a planned series of publications by the Fair
Tax Commission, contains five articles. The commission (established by
the Treasurer of Ontario) is undertaking studies to inform public
opinion on questions of taxation.

John Head’s “Tax-Fairness Principles: A Conceptual, Historical and
Practical Review,” is comprehensive and stimulating. Head begins by
outlining a way in which we can, as the title promises, think
practically and conceptually of the tax system: “It [the tax system]
has a quasiconstitutional character in the sense that it remains in
force, usually with only minor changes, over a sequence of budgetary
decision-making periods.” Another perspective on our current tax
system, Marguerite Cassin’s “Equitable and Fair: Widening the
Circle,” approaches the question of fairness from a feminist
viewpoint. Cassin presents some of the feminist critiques of the
assumptions of fairness in our tax system. The remaining articles by
Panitch, Green, and Osberg are equally thought-provoking.

Fairness in Taxation fulfils its mandate of broadening and enhancing
the public debate about fair taxation.