Research Symposium
Sharing the Wealth: Tax and Justice

Theme

This Symposium aims to address fundamental questions concerning how to Share the Wealth in mature democracies in the 21^st century. Mature tax states including the United States and Australia succeeded in the 20^th century with a core goal of redistribution, in a social and fiscal bargain to share the return to economic prosperity through public goods, social welfare and taxation. In the 21^st century, this fiscal bargain is under threat in a context of population ageing, declining fertility, longevity, wage stagnation, growing income and wealth inequality and declining economic growth.

Sharing the wealth occurs through pre-distributional and re-distributional approaches. Our focus is sharing the wealth in the context of these demographic and economic changes, including through income, consumption and wealth taxes. We seek to consider this issue in a broad context recognizing that intergenerational wealth is generated and shared over the course of individual lives, in family and private transfers of money and time during the life course, including and through gifts or inheritance at death, combined with public transfers and investments in public goods through the life course and in retirement. Our project aims to bring interdisciplinary philosophical, legal and economic approaches to update frameworks for justice in taxation, refreshing out-dated 20th century ethical and legal approaches to the tax base and propose reforms more suited to current conditions.