Tax fairness and sustainability – a matter of legitimacy?

In the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, some of the underlying values are equity or equality. These can be understood from several different perspectives, such as environmental, gender, economic or social. These underlying values can be understood from theories on tax fairness and affects our understanding and notion of different taxes.

This seminar focus particularly on issues related to environmental taxes such as the Swedish taxes on chemicals in certain products and tax on plastic bags. The objective of the seminar is to raise a number of critical issues from a legal perspective affecting how tax fairness and sustainability affect our notion of if a tax is considered as legitimate or not.

Pernilla Rendahl is professor in tax law at the law department, School of Business, Economics and Law at Gothenburg university and member of the Board for Advanced Tax Rulings, indirect tax. Her core research areas are taxation of the digital economy and sustainability in tax law, particularly focusing on indirect taxes such as value added tax and environmental taxes.