This introductory chapter illustrates some of the linkages between tax and human rights. Taxation affects which resources stay in private versus public hands, which activities are encouraged or discouraged, how much is available to the state, and who pays for and receives the public goods and services the state provides. Human rights, in turn, inform not only how tax policy should be made, but what policies are permissible, when, and why, setting parameters for the revenue-raising objectives and distributive effects of taxation, as well as the processes by which tax laws are adopted and implemented. In short, tax affects the realization of human rights in all countries—developed and developing alike—through its role in resource mobilization, redistribution, regulation, and representation. The chapter provides an overview of the volume’s contents and discusses how the policy of fiscal consolidation underpins many of the phenomena examined in those contributions. It then identifies some of the key ways in which human rights norms should feature in future debates over fiscal policy.