1. I am not claiming that taxes are the core of politics (which is probably an overstatement), but that any argument on taxation is connected with the basic political auestions.
2. Cf. Schumpeter (1954a, 202).
3. Cf. Bodin (1977, 855), already referred in chapter 1, fn. 90. The metaphor seems to have been coined by Roman lawyers (at least this is what Vanoni claimed. Cf. Vanoni (1961, 313). It can be found also in Considerations on the French Revolution by Burke: “To mortgage the public revenue implies the sovereign dominion, in the fullest sense, over the public purse”. Also in The Federalist, XXX: “A complete power therefore to procure a regular and adequate supply of [money], as far as the resources of the community will permit may be regarded as an indispensable ingredient in very constitution”. Cf. Hamilton, Jay and Madison (1987, 212). As of late, it has been “recycled” by Epstein (1986,49): “[T]axes are to the State as food is to the body”
4. McCaffery (1996, 90) considers that it is the most important determinant of private behaviour. Graetz (1997, 23) points that more people fill in a tax form than vote. A ranking minority member of the House Ways and Means Committee, Barber Conable, once said that “There is no issue more central to the relationship between government and people that taxation”; quoted in Jensen (1991, 369). Cf. Musgrave (1959, 17).
5. This idea is further explored in §163 by means of considering that the obligation to pay taxes is a partial institutionalisation of duties of solidarity.