The Distorted View of Tax Neutrality as an Objective of the Robot Tax: A Misleading Desire to Treat Robots and Human Workers as Equals

In recent years, the debate surrounding the proposal of a robot tax as a response to the adverse impacts of accelerated automation on human labour has gained significant traction. Its increasingly skill-biased substitution with automation processes is assumed to result in diminishing labour income tax revenues and simultaneously increasing social transfer costs due to rising unemployment. This assumption places the historically established role of labour income taxes as a primary source of public funds under considerable scrutiny. The robot tax is being discussed as a tool to safeguard the resilience of state transfer systems and enable a smooth transition of the labour market by decelerating the pace of automation in businesses that employ human workers. The current debate is marked by an emphasis on the desire to create tax neutrality between robots and humans. Further developing previous academic publications, this article examines the concept of tax neutrality in the context of the robot tax. Diverging from the focus on the tax neutrality of specified theoretical frameworks for deploying a robot tax, however, it examines the neutrality concept based on the nature of robots in comparison to labour. The article concludes that the aim to equalize automated systems and human workers for tax purposes is misguided and could ultimately distort tax neutrality.