Author's response to the commentators

Abstract

Pretax income lacks independent moral significance and cannot serve as a normative baseline for evaluating economic justice or tax equity. Because property rights are legal conventions inextricably linked to the existence of the state and its tax system, traditional criteria of vertical and horizontal equity—which measure tax burdens against a pretax starting point—are conceptually incoherent. Justice in taxation must instead be assessed according to the overall after-tax outcomes and the systemic effects produced by the legal-economic order. While distributive justice remains subject to various political values, including liberty, responsibility, and status equality, these considerations do not validate the “everyday libertarian” assumption that individuals have a prima facie moral entitlement to their market earnings. Market outcomes reflect factors such as inherited capital and luck rather than pure productive effort, further undermining claims of desert based on gross income. Consequently, specific fiscal policies, such as the treatment of capital gains or gratuitous transfers, should be evaluated by their contribution to an efficient and just distribution of social welfare. Although practical considerations like reasonable expectations constrain policy implementation, the ultimate fairness of a tax system is determined by the legitimacy of the social results it facilitates rather than its impact on morally arbitrary pretax distributions. – AI-generated abstract.