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Why should we pay taxes? How should we share burdens and benefits of taxation? The endless debates on the two most common and enduring theories of tax justice – benefit-received principle and ability-to-pay principle – can be regarded as a continuous attempt to find satisfactory and shareable answers to these questions. The main objective of the present research is to re-read the problem of tax justice through the lens of reciprocity and, accordingly, to provide new answers to these old questions. I will show: a) that it is possible and useful to re-read the unresolved tension between the two main theories of tax justice with the categories of reciprocity, namely as a problem of the distinction between exchange and gift, but without necessarily opposing one to the other, or re-proposing the self-interest / altruism dichotomy; b) that it is possible and necessary to understand taxation also as a form of gift; c) how the gift may help us understand and re-articulate the conflicting demands  (equality Vs freedom) for tax justice.

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