Consumption Taxation and Democratic Process

The object of this paper is to examine consumption taxation from a constitutionalist public choice perspective. This perspective is characterized by several distinctive features. In the first place, and most cons picuously, the perspective places in the analytical foreground, the fact that decisions about the bases upon which, and rates at which, taxes are to be levied are political decisions. In the second place, the perspective emphasizes the essential connection between the tax and expenditure sides of the budget. In the third place, the perspective identifies tax arrangements as part of the institutional/constitutional fabric within which other political determinations are made, rather than merely as ordinary outcomes of political process.