Principi etici e tributi nella tradizione giuridica romano-cristiana

In this article, Lorenzo Franchini reflects on how one of the original functions of the state in the Roman age was to protect the property of the patres familias, and certainly not to diminish it through direct taxation. Thus, for a long time, in order to pursue public interest, recourse to indirect taxation prevailed, until, from Diocletian onwards, together with the progressive bureaucratisation of the entire political and social organisation, a heavy real tax was introduced, with increasing attention being paid to tax law – which had by then become an autonomous branch of law – in the codification projects of that time. The advent of Christianity, whilst on the one hand strengthening certain solidarity-based principles ensuring the prevailing of the common good over the individual, on the other hand never went so far as to deny the value of private property as such, as it was considered an institution of natural law. These trends, which emerged in medieval and modern legal practice, have been essentially confirmed in the so-called social doctrine of the Church, right up to the present day.