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Why do we pay taxes? How should we share burdens and benefits of taxation? The most recent literature on tax compliance, tax morale, the behavioral economics and the public good experiments have showed the impossibility of answering this question with the categories of homo economicus and self-interest, invoking the need for a different behavioral model, i.e. the homo reciprocans, better suited to explain the complex motives of human action: compliance with social norms, mutual trust and trust in institutions, altruism, group motivations, and, above all, reciprocal fairness and shared burdens. This literature has nevertheless overlooked the anthropological literature on reciprocity and gift-giving as well as the fact that the issues of fairness and shared burdens have always been the main concern of the most common theories of taxation – benefit-cost principle and ability-to-pay principle – even though these theories have often run up against the alleged theoretical conflict between justice and freedom in taxation.

This paper aims to demonstrate: a) that it is possible and useful to re-read the unresolved tension between the two main theories of taxation with the categories of reciprocity, namely as a problem of the distinction between exchange and gift, but without necessarily opposing one to the other; b) that, in order to re-articulate the demands for justice and freedom in taxation, it is possible and necessary to understand taxation also as a form of gift.

Tax; ability-to-pay principle; benefit-received principle; exchange, reciprocity, gift