Abstract
This paper examines the explicit and implicit ideological content of tax reform embodied in three views of taxation: (a) a comprehensive tax base, (b) the utilitarian approach, (c) the fiscal-exchange taxation paradigm. The framework proffered has the advantage of standing on the normative underpinnings of these instant views of tax reform.
It argues that by adopting a constitutional perspective, the apparently different views of tax reform in these three views of taxation are explicable. We consider tax reform as a mechanism by which those rules which define the tax constitution are to be modified as circumstances change. The process of constitutional adjustment possesses an internal logic. Policy choice in the area of tax reform can be unified with a coherent theoretical model if the constitutional perspective is adopted,
