Chapter 9 Summary and conclusions

The current chapter 9 presents a summary and the main conclusions and recommendations following from this PhD thesis, titled ‘Aiming for Well-Being Through Taxation: A Framework of Caution and Restraint for States’.

In recent years, concepts of well-being have gained increasing attention in societal and political debates. For example, New Zealand in May 2019 published a first Wellbeing Budget, broadening its definition of success well beyond financial health, and associating certain of its tax measures explicitly with well-being aims. Parallel to these developments, a growing body of research from different scientific disciplines is concerned with the role that well-being should play in the functioning of states. However, and notwithstanding the developing attention for interactions between well-being and taxation, the normative question whether states should aim for well-being through taxation has up to now not yet been the focus point in scientific research.

This PhD thesis specifically concerns the normative questions whether states should aim for well-being through taxation, and what should be the framework of assessment in that regard, and is structured as follows.

The introductory chapter 1 outlines the motivation of the research and presents the main research questions, as well as the methodological approach used to address those questions. Chapter 1 also argues the significance of the research, sets out its limitations, as well as the research structure. In chapter 2, the case for states to aim for well-being through taxation is elaborated upon. Chapter 3 determines, in answer to the first main research question, whether states should aim for well-being through taxation, by revisiting and critically scrutinising the case for states to aim for well-being through taxation. In chapter 4, following the conclusions from chapter 3 and in answer to the second main research question, a framework of assessment that instils caution and restraint is proposed and explained, for purposes of assessing tax measures undertaken by states in their aim for well-being through taxation. In chapters 5, 6, and 7, and for illustrative purposes, the proposed assessment framework is applied to three case studies of topics that may attract states to aim for well-being through taxation, to identify practices, issues, and recommendations to be made. These three topics concern, respectively, tax incentives for innovation, environmental taxes, and tax incentives for employment. In chapter 8, the results and recommendations following from application of the assessment framework in chapters 5 to 7 are reflected on. Chapter 8 also provides suggestions for future research.

The following sections provide a summary per chapter and the main conclusions and recommendations of this PhD thesis.