Abstract

The Author highlights the increased importance of the (re)distribution role played by the State in periods of strong economic and financial crisis, such as the current one. In this respect, he focuses on the theoretical possibility of taking «capabilities» as taxable objects, which represent direct comparative indicators of individual advantage positions and fulfillment of needs or interests, even if they do not coincide with income, property or consumption. As to vertical equity, the author indicates a possible solution which, in his view, would allow coexistence between the principle of progressive taxation and the principle of benefit and proportional taxation. After more than forty years since the last general tax reform, he wishes for the creation of a new tax system, which - based on European instruments and on the perspective of a European tax union - may ensure a better distribution of the taxable base according to the above mentioned wide interpretation of the ability to pay principle and, in the same time, may reintroduce a progressive taxation favourable to disadvantaged (or less advantaged) people pursuant to Rawls' "maximin" rule, even if without reaching the theoretical perfection of the curve of the 1970s.