An edition of The Economist Bagehot column from a few months ago makes for an interesting read. Its author argues that, on the Left of British politics, a debate is opening up again about the moral basis of taxation and the question of not just who, but what primarily should be taxed. The author’s observations are based on the recent strapline adopted by the Green Party’s Zack Polanski that we should ‘tax wealth and not work’. The moral purpose of this focus, Polanski argued on the BBC, would primarily be to reduce inequality. This goes further than previous debates that have sought to argue about the balance or proportionate burdens of taxation and opens something of a faultline on the British Left. Meanwhile, the taxation plans of the Reform Party have shifted significantly over the last year – from sweeping tax cuts to more modest proposals to tax property, work, fuel and business a little less. In the last month, we have seen hints that the government would break its manifesto pledge on tax, only to reverse course. Nothing in the arena of public taxation seems very clear or especially stable.
This is, then, a good, if sober, moment to be turning to the tradition of Catholic social teaching to explore what resources it might offer to public debate. In this post, I will set out a few lines of reflection – none of which dictate straight linear answers or policies. I will then conclude with a brief reflection on some challenging contextual matters that might also be taken into account as part of a “common good” conversation about taxation.
Adam Smith’s four principles for taxation were that it should be equitable, certain, convenient and efficient. Taxation should serve the common good of the social contract by being equitably distributed in terms of benefits and burdens, predictable to the population (i.e., not arbitrary and be transparent), be payable in the easiest most convenient way by the populace, and efficient such that the money taken goes with minimum losses into the treasury for the public benefit. These sound like sensible principles and have at their roots a commitment to maximising the public good in a manner that respects the freedom and dignity of the individual. These are sentiments that Catholic social teaching might well resonate with, although the basis of its agreement would stem from a rather thicker, deeper story about human nature and the human polity than Adam Smith tells.
Catholic social teaching starts from the assumption that we are creatures of a divine creator who are created in freedom, and where that freedom is above all a positive freedom to seek the good. We can only seek that good together in co-creative and inter-dependent social relationships that begin in the most basic communities. All the deepest, lasting goods in our life can only be achieved with others – from love, reproduction, work, art, care, to worship. The formation of community towards the protection of these goods is hard-wired into our nature, and we form these at a variety of levels. Of course, given our fallen natures, we do this more or less convincingly! Indeed, this point is used in its negative form in some Church documents on taxation to point out that private profit emerges in the context of this web of social relationships – profit and private wealth is the product of the lasting goods that require social cooperation and is never totally separate from them.
In Catholic teaching, explicitly political communities are formed to provide the basis for order, stability and creative enterprise of various kinds. For Catholics, politics is always about more than merely restraining evil or sin or fabricating an artificial social contract: it is about nurturing the conditions that allow the virtues to flourish and each person and entity to achieve its fulfilled end or excellence. This itself is a distinctive part of the Catholic witness to politics. Politics is a participation in the order of good, as well as restraint of harm. This Catholic anthropology makes a difference in what we might have to say about taxation for it grounds a vision of the moral purpose of political community and economic exchange. We are social, co-responsible, co-creative and seek an end through politics and markets that exceeds, but includes, the pathway of the political and economic. This happens best when that vision of political life is not narrowed to the state alone, but is rich, plural, thick and maximally participatory. This vision has been a central anchoring part of all Catholic social teaching documents on taxation for the last sixty years – enabling taxation to be thought of within a contributory and participatory moral frame. The caveat being that not all taxation, particularly regressive or punitive taxes, fits this frame.
In this context, raising and imposing proportionate and balanced taxation, and deciding on relief from such taxes, is but one means available to a political community to do one of four things: to provide for the basic needs of the population (even when they might not be the sole agent of doing so): education, health, public services, basic welfare to support human dignity, security and peace, and defence, and so forth, including a safety net for the most vulnerable; to promote perceived social goods or forms of desired behaviour – from marriage to charitable giving; to manage the economy and distribute benefits and burdens in an equitable fashion; to promote a sense of social solidarity and common life including the inter-generational protection of resources for the future.
Taxation, proportionately developed, anchored in the twin principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. is therefore part of how we express social membership, neighbour love, responsible care for a common life and a common home and generational and inter-generational justice. It is also part of how we commit ourselves to paying attention to the other grounding principle of Catholic social teaching – the universal destination of goods. This is the notion that the Creator intends the goods of creation to meet the needs of all. Where those goods are inaccessible to some, we must use our organisational creativity to redirect them to meet that intention.
Most of the really interesting questions, of course, emerge once you drill down into the detail of these broad reflections.
It is worth concluding by mentioning two relevant contextual factors to which Catholic social teaching would want us to pay attention as part of what we might call the wider ecology of taxation for the common good. Positive attitudes towards taxation clearly relate to wider public perceptions of trust and democratic legitimacy. The public need to trust that everyone pays their share, that taxes are not avoided by some and that they are well spent with a common benefit. The public also need a sense that taxes are circulating as a form of economic transaction between polity and person within a wider social contract that is seen as legitimate. Therefore, in our own volatile moment, it seems as important to think about taxation not only in the micro details of implied burdens and benefits but also to be able to think about taxation as part of an integral question of the social whole in which questions of social trust and the social contract are also addressed. It is interesting to see how much recent discussion of tax policy does in fact seek to address these wider questions of democratic deficit and social trust. These are questions of participation, recognition and dignity not only of contribution and distribution – for in the end they are all part of a single social ecology. And it is perhaps here, in making this case for an integral approach to tax, that Catholic social teaching really has a greater contribution to make.
—
Render unto Caesar was published by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales in 2025. It was followed by an event, and this series of three blog posts is a set of articles based on the speakers’ remarks at that event.
—
Useful links:
