Tonkin, Ryan2025-08-292025-08-292025https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22698The purpose of this project is to articulate and defend the view that both fairness and efficiency as they are understood in a great deal of tax analysis are plagued by a similar kind of comparative conceptual error, which I characterize as a baseline problem. I begin with consideration of the notions of property and ownership that best capture our existing legal and institutional practice. This practice reveals how ostensibly pretax descriptions of resources are institutionally constructed and highly contingent. I then turn to tax burden analysis as it is understood in tax policy and the orthodox approach to public finance. I join a handful of scholars who argue that this orthodoxy commits a serious conceptual error. As an alternative, I recommend conceiving of taxation as a technology embedded in a comprehensive social architecture. Resistance to this kind of approach is often directed at its alleged implausible commitment to a thoroughly conventional conception of property rights. However, I argue it has no such commitment and is consistent with a strong commitment to economic liberties. I then argue that a parallel baseline problem can be identified in two economic concepts routinely applied to assess efficiency in tax policy: Pareto efficiency and deadweight loss. I argue that both depend on comparative baselines that are often implausible or unjustified, and at the same time ignored or obscured. Finally, I consider the practice of reporting tax expenditures and the public discourse about “fair shares” as examples of baseline problems in practice.enAvailable to the World Wide WebTaxationTax JusticeEconomic JusticeDistributive JusticeSocial JusticeTax Burden AnalysisProperty RightsPolitical PhilosophyTax ExpendituresBaseline AnalysisPareto EfficiencyDeadweight LossFair SharesTax PhilosophyHorizontal EquityVertical EquityThesis