This Working Paper traces the discursive history of the principles of benefit and legitimacy of taxation from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Drawing on the work of scholars from Adam Smith through Richard Musgrave to public choice theorists, it is observed that successful tax...

Tax reform is deeply political. There is now a significant body of political and economic research by political scientists and sociologists, concerning fiscal politics or sociology, in particular addressing taxation in democracies. At the same time, we take for granted, nowadays, that the...

Gender inequality is profoundly unjust and in clear contradiction to the philosophy of the ?fair go?. In spite of some action by recent governments, Australia has fallen behind in policy and outcomes, even as the G20 group of nations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development...

In 2008, the Australian Labor government announced a review of Australia’s Future Tax System which reports at the end of 2009. The Review has a broad remit to examine Australia’s federal and state tax and transfer (welfare) systems. Gender issues are at play in some crucial parts of the...

Many forms of value added tax (VAT) or goods and services tax (GST) include a tax refund scheme for goods acquired by tourists when they visit a jurisdiction. These schemes have not been widely researched, and this article aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed discussion of the policy,...