Tax Ethics

Tax ethics concern the values, practices, and consequences of taxation as a means of distributing the benefits and burdens of citizenship, including evaluation of the conduct of taxpayers, their accountants, and their financial advisers in determining and taking responsibility for their fair share of the tax burden. The moral framework for evaluating taxation considers both ends and means in the apportioned tax burden, an accounting of the economic distortions caused by taxation itself, and an assessment of the impact on the economy of public goods and services, their impact on the larger economy, and their impact on social equity. Ethical concerns about taxation center on the proper integration of competing claims: social justice, individual freedom, economic productivity, and efficiency applied to the tax system itself ...