Samuel Singer (Ottawa; Google Scholar) & Allison Christians (McGill; Google Scholar), Critical Perspectives in Canadian Tax Law, in Critical Conversations in Canadian Public Law (University of Ottawa Press 2025):
The purpose of this article is to spotlight the role of critical tax law scholarship in Canada. We argue that critical perspectives are essential to identifying inequities in Canadian tax law, from the most specific tax rules to the core structure of tax regimes. We begin by focusing on the contribution of critical perspectives in analyzing specific tax rules, using examples of tax relief for trans medical expenses and the exemption of menstruation products from sales tax. We then focus on the importance of critical perspectives in the analysis of tax law regimes and show how critical legal scholars reveal the colonialism reflected in Canada’s tax relationships with First Nations and with other states. We demonstrate that a core challenge for critical tax law scholars is to navigate the disparity that arises between harmful tax policy choices that prompt reform and those which meet silence. We conclude that a major contribution of critical tax law scholarship in Canada to date has been to demonstrate that tax law cannot be exclusively delegated to technical experts but requires broad and inclusive policy attention.
Conclusion
Tax law shapes socio-economic relationships, whether between individuals or entities or across societies. The content and impact of tax rules and tax regimes should therefore be central in scholarship and public discourse surrounding the role law plays in shaping our lives. Feminist legal scholarship, critical race theory, Indigenous legal studies, queer legal studies, critical disability studies, and trans legal scholarship have made the case for the central role of critical perspectives in legal analysis. Critical perspectives are essential to informing public debate by revealing and confronting the disparate and harmful impacts of tax rules and regimes.
Critical legal analysis of tax rules demonstrates how line-drawing can reflect and maintain inequities within societies, and how tax policy is central in public policy debates about the role of the state. Critical legal analysis of tax law regimes demonstrates how governments’ tax relationships with First Nations and other states reflect and maintain inequities across societies. These two core areas of critical tax studies reveal that tax policy choices sometimes inspire public attention and legal reform, as in the case of the Pink Tax movement, while others continue unabated, as in the ongoing inequities in terms of tax cooperation among nations.
Critical tax law scholarship in Canada is key to making tax policy choices personal to experts and non-experts alike. It reveals the subjective decision-making that has become embedded in traditional norms and assumptions and demonstrates the case for reform. Critical tax studies show that even obscure tax rules and complex tax regimes should not be shaped solely through discussion among experts but deserve broad-based, inclusive policy attention.
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