Abstract
THE papers presented before the American Philosophical Society in the symposium on "Taxation and the Social Structure" at its midwinter meeting on February 18–19, 1944, have now been published (Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc., 88, No. 1, 1; 1944). American conditions, with the complex relations between State and Federal taxation, to which there is no exact parallel in Great Britain, make the papers somewhat difficult for British readers to follow. Nevertheless, they are of interest at present in view of the reconsideration of the relations between national and local taxation which is being enforced upon Great Britain by some of the trends towards social security, and also of the bearing of fiscal policy on industrial development, such as the concessions announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in relation to obsolescence and research in his last budget speech. In Britain, as in the United States, it is realized that taxation is no passive instrument, but that it inevitably affects the social structure and determines the course of social evolution. Accordingly, taxation policy is an integral part of general social and economic policy, and as such must be recognized in our social philosophy.
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Taxation and the Social Structure. Nature 154, 484 (1944). https://doi.org/10.1038/154484a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/154484a0