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The Double Taxation of Savings: The Italian Debate Revisited

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  • Amedeo Fossati

Abstract

The statement that taxing earned income implies that saved income is taxed more than consumed income is usually credited to John Stuart Mill and was championed by Irving Fisher, even though, in the first half of the twentieth century, international doctrine never accepted it, save for Alfred Marshall and A. C. Pigou. In Italy the double taxation of savings was endorsed by Luigi Einaudi and was the object of heated debate among Italian public finance scholars. The expenditure tax should have followed from the theorem of double taxation as a corollary, and indeed, it was proposed by Einaudi and revived by Nicholas Kaldor in 1955. The present article is dedicated to examining the crucial aspects of the Italian debate on the double taxation of savings, which lasted from 1912 to 1942, with the aim, first, of highlighting its peculiarity and specificity with respect to the previous English-language literature, and second, of analyzing from a historiographical perspective the main reasoning put forward in the debate.

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  • Amedeo Fossati, 2013. "The Double Taxation of Savings: The Italian Debate Revisited," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 45(1), pages 123-148, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:45:y:2013:i:1:p:123-148
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    Cited by:

    1. Amedeo Fossati & Marcello Montefiori, 2016. "Antonio De Viti de Marco, political competition, and the principle of minimum means," Working papers 49, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    2. Amedeo Fossati, 2016. "The First Principles of Public Finance by Antonio de Viti de Marco: Is There Any Disparity between the Assessments of the Italian and the English Speaking Scholars?," STUDI ECONOMICI, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(118-119-1), pages 88-110.

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