I don’t see much similarity in the considerations that go into the question of whether to pay what one legally owes, and whether to rearrange one’s affairs in a manner that results in less legal tax liability. So presenting them as two species of fundamentally the same thing doesn’t help anyone understand or decide anything relevant.
On the actual moral question, I think “hey why don’t we just not pay tax” is the same species of terminal misaligned EA-brain that led to SBF.
The consideration war tax resisters have is that it’s bad for the government to get tax money it can spend on wars. Thus refusing to pay what one owes and not owing are equivalent in their effects.
They are equivalent in their effects on governmental tax receipts. Other effects vary significantly.
Also, it’s not clear that governmental tax receipts actually constrain government spending, at least not directly. And if you are talking about whether your specific dollar goes to some bad effect, I think the “it’s not new” flavors of MMTers* have it right—government spending creates dollars and taxation destroys dollars. So there’s no more direct connection between your personal tax dollars and any particular government spending. Government creation of dollars by spending overall can be more or less inflationary depending on how many dollars government destroys by taxing.
* MMT has often been characterized as either not new or not true, and there are different claims it makes. I would say that the alleged “not new” claims are in fact true, and make no claim regarding the agreed-new but allegedly not true claims.
Well, on the similarity/difference point, I would say that the line between legally rearranging one’s affairs and not paying what is owed is a very thin line. Government usually doesn’t like when you rearrange stuff to reduce your taxes and thus often the legal doctrine says that as long as your primary motivation in rearranging your affairs was lower tax it’s classified as a tax evasion and thus illegal.
On the morality point, I am not defending the deranged “the end justifies the means” principle. All I am saying is that many people don’t consider the power the government is exerting over them (eg the power to collect taxes) as legitimate and thus don’t see anything wrong with not paying the taxes.
Why?
Some people don’t believe in the moral imperative to pay taxes they legally owe.
I don’t see much similarity in the considerations that go into the question of whether to pay what one legally owes, and whether to rearrange one’s affairs in a manner that results in less legal tax liability. So presenting them as two species of fundamentally the same thing doesn’t help anyone understand or decide anything relevant.
On the actual moral question, I think “hey why don’t we just not pay tax” is the same species of terminal misaligned EA-brain that led to SBF.
The consideration war tax resisters have is that it’s bad for the government to get tax money it can spend on wars. Thus refusing to pay what one owes and not owing are equivalent in their effects.
They are equivalent in their effects on governmental tax receipts. Other effects vary significantly.
Also, it’s not clear that governmental tax receipts actually constrain government spending, at least not directly. And if you are talking about whether your specific dollar goes to some bad effect, I think the “it’s not new” flavors of MMTers* have it right—government spending creates dollars and taxation destroys dollars. So there’s no more direct connection between your personal tax dollars and any particular government spending. Government creation of dollars by spending overall can be more or less inflationary depending on how many dollars government destroys by taxing.
* MMT has often been characterized as either not new or not true, and there are different claims it makes. I would say that the alleged “not new” claims are in fact true, and make no claim regarding the agreed-new but allegedly not true claims.
Well, on the similarity/difference point, I would say that the line between legally rearranging one’s affairs and not paying what is owed is a very thin line. Government usually doesn’t like when you rearrange stuff to reduce your taxes and thus often the legal doctrine says that as long as your primary motivation in rearranging your affairs was lower tax it’s classified as a tax evasion and thus illegal.
On the morality point, I am not defending the deranged “the end justifies the means” principle. All I am saying is that many people don’t consider the power the government is exerting over them (eg the power to collect taxes) as legitimate and thus don’t see anything wrong with not paying the taxes.