On 25 February 2020, Professor Tsilly Dagan discussed her paper which explains why designing a country’s tax policy with the elasticity of taxpayers’ choices of residency in mind, although a rational welfare-maximizing move by the state as a whole, and possibly even for its immobile as well as mobile constituents, is a policy that may not be justified under a liberal-egalitarian social contract.
She discussed two polar views of the social contract: one endorsing the state with the coercive power to promote the joint interests of its constituents. The other views the coercive power of the state as a way to fulfill the collective will of its constituents as a society of equals in order to promote who they are as people. If states’ coercive power is based on the latter, a policy that undercuts equal respect and concern might not be justified. The state thus faces a dilemma: taking into account the increased electivity of taxation (by some) could undermine the normative foundations of the power of the state to tax. Ignoring such increased electivity, on the other hand, may limit the potential of (some) individuals and the state as a whole to flourish.
Tsilly Dagan, LLB JSD Tel-Aviv, LLM New York, is Professor of Taxation Law, Oxford University, Faculty of Law, a fellow of Worcester college, and the Raoul Wallenberg Professor of Law at Bar-Ilan University. Professor Dagan’s main fields of research and teaching are tax law and policy (both domestic and international) and the interaction of the state and the market. She has taught and researched as a scholar in residence at the University of Michigan, University of Western Ontario, and Columbia University, and was a member of the Group on Global Justice at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem. Prior to her appointment at Oxford she has served as Associate Dean for Research at Bar Ilan and as Editor-in-Chief of the law review. Her book International Tax Policy: Between Competition and Cooperation (Cambridge University Press) is the winner of the 2017 Frans Vanistendael Award for International Tax Law. She is also the author of numerous articles, including The Tax Treaties Myth; International Tax and Global Justice; The Global Market for Tax and Legal Rules; The Currency of Taxation; Itemizing Personhood; Commuting; and Rights for Sale.