fact_check "No Justification for Progressive Taxation on the Ground of Justice"
format_quote The quote
"There can be no justification for progressive taxation on the ground of justice."
Widely attributed to Hayek, Friedrich
error No confirmed primary source. Almost certainly a flattened paraphrase, not a genuine Hayek sentence.
What We Found
This line circulates online as a direct Hayek quote on progressive taxation, usually cited to The Constitution of Liberty (1960), Chapter 20, “Taxation and Redistribution.” Every check came back empty:
- Not in the 1953 essay. Hayek’s most focused piece on this exact topic, “The Case Against Progressive Income Taxes” (The Freeman, December 28, 1953), was read in full for this investigation. The phrase does not appear, though the essay makes closely related arguments about progression lacking any principle to determine relative burdens.
- Not in the fullest secondary account of the book. Eugene F. Miller’s Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty: An Account of Its Argument (Institute of Economic Affairs, 2010) is a page-by-page scholarly walkthrough of the entire book, including a dedicated, closely quoted section on Chapter 20 (pp. 305–333) covering all four of Hayek’s arguments against progressive taxation (scientific, political, expedient, and moral) with direct citations throughout. This exact sentence never appears in it.
- The real, verbatim, page-cited material nearby says something different. What Hayek actually wrote, and what secondary sources actually quote with page numbers, includes: “all arguments in support of progression can be used to justify any degree of progression” (p. 313); “the majority which determines what the total amount of taxation should be must also bear it at the maximum rate” (p. 322); and that progressive taxation violates “what is probably the only universally recognized principle of economic justice, that of ‘equal pay for equal work’” (pp. 313–317). None of these is the sentence being quoted online.
- A likely ancestor has been found. Miller’s own scholarly summary of Hayek’s position, stated in his own words rather than Hayek’s (no quotation marks in the original), reads: “None of these progressive measures can be defended on grounds of justice.” This is a very close match in content and phrasing to the quote in circulation, and is a plausible source: a commentator’s paraphrase, repeated enough times online, hardened into a fake direct quotation attributed to Hayek himself.
Taken together, this looks like the same pattern documented in this site’s other misattributed entries: a real argument Hayek made, compressed and rephrased by a secondary source, that then circulated as if it were Hayek’s own sentence. If a genuine primary source for this exact wording ever surfaces, this entry should be corrected or retired.
Sources Checked
- Eugene F. Miller, "Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty: An Account of Its Argument" (IEA, 2010) — full page-by-page treatment of Chapter 20
- G. R. Steele, "Progressive Taxation: Applying Hayek's Constraint", The Political Quarterly, Vol. 82 No. 2 (2011) — quotes the real p.314 passage
- F. A. Hayek, "The Case Against Progressive Income Taxes", The Freeman (Dec 28, 1953) — full text, checked directly, phrase absent