Applying Sustainability to Tax

Abstract

This Article argues that sustainability can and should be applied to taxation to ameliorate the effects of industrialization on society and the planet. In making the case for a sustainability approach to taxation, we suggest that prior approaches to tax policy analysis have been insufficiently interdisciplinary and have failed to fully embrace challenging normative questions that underpin tax. Using sustainability literature from other disciplines, we show how sustainability can provide a superior approach. Specifically, sustainability requires an examination of foundational, normative questions, integration of interdisciplinary collaboration, embrace of long-term solutions, and adaptation to an ever-evolving technological society. Using these attributes as a guide, we introduce a series of questions to prompt tax scholars to consider how tax policy can support the society that we wish to sustain.