In this article we tackle a fundamental problem in tax law: the resistance of the core concept of “income” to a coherent definition. It has long been recognized that there is a substantial gap between the formal definition of income adopted in 1955 by the Supreme Court in Commissioner v....

In this paper, we conduct a theoretical analysis of personal taxes (defined to include consumption and income taxes), describe and evaluate the past and present structure of personal taxes in Japan, and based on our findings, make a number of policy recommendations about how to reform personal...