Basic income and the justice of taxation

A basic income system BIS, Philippe van Parijs once wrote, is a disar-mingly simple proposition . In this paper author would like to link it with another disarmingly simple proposition, a tax system that has value added tax VAT as its main source. Starting with a methodological section, the first question to be considered is why lawyers and legal philosophers as such have shown little interest in BIS so far. The next question will be whether BIS is exceptional as a negative form of taxation. The second section is about the justification of BIS as an individual right. The third section of this paper contains an analysis of the incoherence of the prevailing systems of direct taxation. The fourth section is about the coherence between BIS and a VAT-system hence VATS within LSOM. The fifth and final section is concerned with the administra-tive advantages and problems of VATS. Revised paper of the 7th International Congress on Basic Income, Amsterdam, 10-12 September 1998.