https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2002_1/luoga/In this article the focus is to examine the use and functioning of taxation in postcolonial Tanzania before the recent democratisation processes and the change to free market economy. The objective is to demonstrate two things. One, that the legal framework for taxation within which the reforms are implemented[1] was designed for taxation without restraint. It did not contemplate taxation as one of the institutions concerned with state-society relations in governance. Two, the reforms implemented within the retained legal framework may not be viable in the contemporary environment. They lack democratic legitimacy and likely to foment resistance by citizens. To demonstrate the two concerns, a close analysis is made of the philosophies and factors that shaped up the current framework. The starting point is a brief overview of how the pre-independence tax structures survived under the post-independence government and subsequently retained by the system that was established to implement the Arusha Declaration (AD). The latter stands as the hallmark Tanzanian book of principles that organised the polity until recently.