Adam Smith’s blind spot

This article connects Adam Smith’s maxims of taxation—as well as a possible precursor to Smith’s maxims: Roussel de la Tour’s Richesses de l’Etat —with Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s critique of optimal taxation theory. Among other things, Brennan and Buchanan’s critique of the optimality criterion fills an important gap not only in the optimal taxation literature but also in Adam Smith’s thought.