In recent years, the
debate surrounding the proposal of a robot tax as a response to the adverse
impacts of accelerated automation on human labour has gained significant
traction. Its increasingly skill-biased substitution with automation processes
is assumed to result in diminishing labour income tax revenues and
simultaneously increasing social transfer costs due to rising unemployment.
This assumption places the historically established role of labour income taxes
as a primary source of public funds under considerable scrutiny. The robot tax
is being discussed as a tool to safeguard the resilience of state transfer
systems and enable a smooth transition of the labour market by decelerating the
pace of automation in businesses that employ human workers. The current debate
is marked by an emphasis on the desire to create tax neutrality between robots
and humans. Further developing previous academic publications, this article
examines the concept of tax neutrality in the context of the robot tax.
Diverging from the focus on the tax neutrality of specified theoretical
frameworks for deploying a robot tax, however, it examines the neutrality
concept based on the nature of robots in comparison to labour. The article
concludes that the aim to equalize automated systems and human workers for tax
purposes is misguided and could ultimately distort tax neutrality.