Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
how do secular attitudes compare?
I’ve mentioned before the many on-line research papers by Robert McGee, who has spent the last dozen years or so examining the international and historical opinions of philosophers and religious scholars about the ethics of tax evasion, and comparing this to the attitudes of people today.
McGee typically finds in his surveys, to his surprise and mine, only weak support for tax evasion under any circumstances.
For instance, in this survey, on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree), even a statement like “Tax evasion would be ethical if I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany in ” ranks only a 4.5 — among the five faculty members who also took the survey, that question gets an even more incredible 6.8!
(An earlier survey of “international business academics” had a similar result for this question: 4.23)
This paper includes many of the comments written by the Romanian students and may be a good source of information on the sort of attitudes that must be overcome to build sympathy for tax resistance.
I’ve mentioned on past Picket Line entries the work of scholar Robert W. McGee, who has researched the historical and cross-cultural attitudes concerning the ethics of tax evasion.
He now has released several new reports that cover Argentina, Armenia, China, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Poland, Romania and the Ukraine.
McGee surveyed people in these countries and asked them to give a response from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree) to statements including:
Tax evasion is ethical if a large portion of the money collected is spent on projects that I morally disapprove of
Tax evasion is ethical if some of the proceeds go to support a war that I consider to be unjust
Tax evasion would be ethical if I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany in
Not all questions were asked in all surveys, but here were the results for those three questions, along with the average scores for all of the “Tax evasion is ethical if…” questions:
Survey
Average Score
Statement #1
Statement #2
Statement #3
218 students and faculty at Austral University in Argentina
5.4
5.5
4.8
4.1
85 business and theology students in Yerevan, Armenia
4.54
3.80
—
—
173 business and economics students at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China
4.4
4.3
3.6
—
256 business & economics, law and philosophy students at Hubei University and Wuhan Industrial College in Wuhan, China
4.3
3.4
3.3
—
114 business and law students at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala
5.2
4.8
4.9
4.0
279 economics students at the Poznan University of Economics in Poland
4.7
3.7
4.6
3.9
90 business students at Hong Kong Baptist University
5.2
4.7
4.0
—
134 students at the Romanian-American University in Bucharest, Romania
4.59
4.69
4.45
4.50
161 business and economics students at Odessa Mehnikov National University and Odessa State Economics University*
4.31
4.78
4.06
3.67
As you can see from this data, which resembles other sets that McGee has collected, those who answer his surveys do not tend to give much support to tax evasion even in the most extreme circumstances (such as a hypothetical Jew in Nazi Germany paying a government in order to buy the mechanism of his own murder).
Of the 906 people who responded to that statement (“Tax evasion would be ethical if I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany in ”), the average response on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 7 (strongly disagree) was 4.01 — right in the middle.
This demonstrates that the tax resistance movements have a long way to go in influencing public opinion to be at all sympathetic to their viewpoint.
But it also demonstrates, I think, that much of the opposition to tax resistance may be unthinking and knee-jerk and that if people had an opportunity to actually consider the consequences of their thinking on the subject (is that hypothetical Jew really ethically obligated to help pay for Auschwitz?) this might be a beneficial consciousness-raising event that would cause them to look on tax resistance in general in a more sympathetic light.
* This was originally on a scale of 0 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) and I had to convert the numbers to match the others.
American taxpayer support for overall compliance reached an all-time high, according to an annual survey commissioned by the IRS Oversight Board.
Nearly nine out of ten Americans (88%) feel that it is “not at all” acceptable to cheat on your income taxes, the highest level recorded since tracking began in and up two points from .
Attitudinal support for compliance also remains strong, with nearly three out of four agreeing that it is everyone’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes (72%).…
Support for turning in tax cheaters also surpassed last year’s record high, with nearly one of every three taxpayers (30%) agreeing that it is everyone’s personal responsibility to report anyone who cheats on their taxes, a six point increase from and 11 points from .
There is no margin of error given for any of these numbers, and they’ve only been doing the survey since , so these “all-time,” “record” numbers may not really be important as such, but this is a bit of a window into attitudes in the U.S. toward tax compliance.
Myself, I was surprised that the percentage of Americans surveyed who “completely agree” that “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes” was only 72%.
I would have guessed that such a loaded question would have gotten nearly unanimous support, especially since as McGee has demonstrated, people tend to be unwilling to support even a statement like “Tax evasion would be ethical if I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany in .”
Robert McGee has been researching the ethics of tax evasion for over a decade now, through surveys, interviews, and reviews of the existing literature.
His findings are provocative and controversial. I have had an opportunity to ask Mr. McGee some questions about his research, and I share his answers here:
The Picket Line:
Could you first give us a thumbnail sketch of your research into the cross-cultural philosophy of the ethics of tax evasion and your international surveys of present-day opinions about the ethics of tax evasion?
Robert McGee:
Several years ago I wrote an article on the ethics of tax evasion.
It was published under the title “Is Tax Evasion Unethical?”
[University of Kansas Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Winter, ), 411–35.]
A slightly different version of that article was posted on the Social Science Research Network website.
The abstract can be found at http://ssrn.com/abstract=74420.
You can download the full article by hitting the download button.
That article was partly based on a doctoral thesis written by Martin Crowe, a Catholic priest, who researched 500 years of theological (mostly Catholic) literature on the ethics of paying just taxes.
His research showed that the same basic questions and arguments had been popping up over the centuries.
He found that tax evasion was sometimes viewed as ethical, although scholars could not agree on the specifics.
I decided to do some research to expand on the Crowe thesis, so I asked scholars from different religious perspectives to write a paper on the ethics of tax evasion from their religious perspective.
I received positive replies from various Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Baha’i scholars.
Their manuscripts were later published in the Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy and as chapters of an edited book titled The Ethics of Tax Evasion (Dumont Institute ).
Their views are summarized and critiqued in the following articles of mine:
McGee, Robert W., “The Ethics of Tax Evasion and Trade Protectionism from an Islamic Perspective”.
Commentaries on Law & Public Policy, Vol. 1, .
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=461397
McGee, Robert W., “Christian Views on the Ethics of Tax Evasion”.
Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy, Vol. 1, No. 2, .
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=461398
McGee, Robert W., “Jewish Views on the Ethics of Tax Evasion”.
Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy, Vol. 1, No. 3, .
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=461399
McGee, Robert W., “Is It Unethical to Evade Taxes in an Evil or Corrupt State? A Look at Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Mormon and Baha’i Perspectives”.
Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 149–181, Winter .
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=251469
If one were to summarize the various religious views, one could generalize by saying that Mormons and Baha’is think tax evasion is always unethical, Jews believe tax evasion is always or almost always unethical (the two Jewish scholars who wrote papers were in basic agreement that tax evasion is always unethical but I found another Jewish scholar who thought there might be some room for fudging a bit), other Christians think tax evasion may be ethical under certain circumstances and Muslims think tax evasion is ethical if the tax is based on income or if the tax raises prices (like sales taxes, value added taxes or tariffs do).
But other Muslim scholars disagree with this view and take the position that tax evasion is always unethical.
I later summarized these views as well as various secular views, in the following paper:
McGee, Robert W., “Three Views on the Ethics of Tax Evasion” ().
Andreas School of Business Working Paper.
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=841526
Basically, this paper summarizes and critiques the literature on the three main views, that tax evasion is (1) always unethical, (2) sometimes unethical, or (3) never unethical.
These positions are also critiqued in my book, The Philosophy of Taxation and Public Finance (Kluwer ).
I also did a study asking Armenians why they evade taxes.
That study can be found at:
McGee, Robert W., “Why People Evade Taxes in Armenia: A Look at an Ethical Issue Based on a Summary of Interviews”.
Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy, Vol. 2, No. 2, Pp. 408–416, .
Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=242568
A few years later I expanded on this research by conducting surveys on the ethics of tax evasion in a number of countries.
Basically, the surveys consisted of (usually) 18 statements that began, “Tax evasion is ethical if….”
Respondents were told to insert a number from 1 to 7 in the space provided to indicate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with each statement.
I then ranked the 18 arguments for tax evasion from strongest to weakest.
The results showed that:
There is a widespread belief that there is a duty to pay taxes,
Some arguments for tax evasion are stronger than others,
The results are different for different countries,
The results are sometimes different for different subsets of the population — business professors, business students, law students, philosophy students, males v. females, Caucasians v. Hispanics, etc.
Some results were surprising.
There was widespread support for the position that Jews living in Nazi Germany had an ethical duty to pay taxes to Hitler.
I might mention that this research is not yet completed.
I am continuing to conduct surveys of sample populations in different countries.
The results are posted on the Social Science Research Network website www.ssrn.com as they become available.
Readers can find the links to these studies at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2139.
As of the date of this writing the following surveys have been posted:
The Picket Line:
What led you to this area of research? Are you a tax resister?
Robert McGee:
It seems that I have always been interested in taxation and the ability of governments over the centuries to extract taxes from the citizenry and their success in convincing the citizenry that they have a moral obligation to pay.
One pivotal event in this intellectual curiosity came while reading Yes I Can, the autobiography of Sammy Davis, Jr. during as an undergraduate student.
It was there that I learned the federal government was confiscating more than 90 percent of his marginal income, which led me to ask, “Who the fuck are these guys who can get away with such an injustice?”
That’s not what America is all about.
Sammy was doing all the work and taking all the risks but the feds were reaping almost all of the benefits.
It was at about this same time that I was reading Karl Marx, who espoused the belief, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
I concluded that the U.S. tax system was right out of Karl Marx.
Am I a tax resister? Not really.
I pay all the taxes that are legally owed but I try not to pay a penny more.
I don’t pay because of any moral obligation.
I pay because I don’t want to be hassled by the feds.
I applaud anyone who resists the feds or any other level of government.
I am rather aggressive in filing my tax returns.
I have been audited a number of times but usually no deficiency is found.
I am a CPA and I have a law degree and a master’s in taxation, so I know something about minimizing taxes.
One time an IRS goon said I owed $122.
I filed a Tax Court petition to fight it.
When I met with the IRS appellate division goon to resolve the issue he explained that his supervisor needed to see a tax deficiency.
I knew I didn’t owe it and cited the relevant Internal Revenue Code provisions to prove it, but he wouldn’t budge because his supervisor told him to come up with a deficiency, so I paid the $122 to get them off my back.
I should have castrated both of them on the spot.
The Picket Line:
In many of your surveys, you’ve asked people to say to what extent they agree or disagree with the statement “Tax evasion would be ethical if I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany in .”
For tax resisters, this is something of an obvious truism, but the people who answer your surveys frequently disagree with tax evasion even in such an extreme case as this.
How do you explain this?
Robert McGee:
I deliberately included this statement in my surveys to test the limits.
I thought that surely tax evasion would be ethically justified if I were a Jew living in Nazi Germany.
My early surveys used as the relevant date but I received an e-mail from a Jew who suggested would be a better date, so I used in my later surveys.
Isn’t that incredible?
A Jew who is more concerned with the date I chose than with the statement itself?
I received a lot of criticism for using the Jewish item.
Many people thought it was offensive.
Some people insisted that I remove that statement from future surveys.
I actually did remove it, along with two other statements dealing with human rights issues, from my China surveys because I did not want my Chinese co-authors to get in trouble with the Chinese government.
Human rights is not something Chinese scholars can discuss.
But I kept it in the other surveys and I intend to keep using it as a means of testing the limits.
Personally, I believe that anyone who thinks there is an ethical obligation for Jews to pay taxes to Hitler is nuts, but the surveys have found that the vast majority of respondents disagree with me on this point.
There are several possible explanations for their response.
Some respondents just put 7 in each slot, indicating the strongest possible disagreement with any reason for tax evasion.
I wonder if they ever bothered to read the 18 statements.
Another possible explanation is that they worship the State and believe that there is always some obligation to pay.
Although the Jewish item usually received lower scores than the other items, indicating some agreement with the statement, the Jewish item did not always receive the lowest score and the score it did receive was often in the 3 or 4 range, indicating that a strong degree of disagreement existed in the minds of the respondents.
Another explanation is that some religious nut cases believe God commands them to pay taxes.
They follow the Bible blindly in the mistaken belief that God wrote that book.
Actually, the Bible is unclear on the point.
In some places it states that we must obey all laws but in other places it fudges a bit.
Jesus weaseled out of the issue by stating that we should pay Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s and pay God the things that are God’s, without indicating exactly what Cæsar is entitled to.
The Picket Line:
Have you had an opportunity to engage directly with any of your survey respondents who stated they believed that German Jews had an obligation to pay taxes to the Nazi government, to ask in more detail why they felt this way?
Do you find that if people are challenged to think through examples such as this that their opinions on conscientious tax resistance in general tend to become more accepting?
Robert McGee:
I am now doing a study with a co-author who is a Hasidic rabbi.
He distributed the survey to his orthodox Jewish students.
Surprisingly, many of them put 6 or 7 in the slot for the Jewish statement, indicating a strong disagreement with the view that Jews are ethically justified in evading taxes in Nazi Germany.
Females often had higher scores than males for this item, indicating that they were even more strongly opposed to evasion.
There are several possible explanations for the high scores even among Jews.
There is the widespread belief within Judaism that God commands Jews to obey all laws, which includes tax laws.
If one really believes that bullshit, it is easy to conclude that Jews have an ethical duty to pay taxes to Hitler.
There is another widespread belief within Judaism, which goes back hundreds if not thousands of years in the Jewish literature, that Jews must not do anything to discredit other Jews.
Therefore, a Jew must not evade taxes, not because of any ethical duty to the State but because of a duty to other Jews.
Another reason cited in the Jewish literature is that Jews must not do anything that might cause them to go to jail, since they would not be able to practice their faith while in prison.
Ayn Rand would probably cite this belief that there is a duty for Jews to pay taxes to Hitler as an example of the sanction of the victim.
Does inclusion of this item in the surveys make people more likely to believe that tax resistance is sometimes justified?
In some cases I think that it does.
But the high scores for this statement indicate that inclusion of the Jewish example is not very persuasive.
Although this example is often thought provoking, I do not think it convinces many people that tax evasion can be justified on moral grounds, although it does start them thinking about the issue.
If they were convinced, they would have put 1 in the space provided, which was almost never the case.
From conversations I have had with respondents I have found that many of them have never before questioned the moral authority of government to extract whatever it likes from the citizenry.
One explanation is the belief that any democratically elected government can do no wrong in this regard because the people have consented to be taxed.
I have pointed out the flaws in this line of reasoning in my various books and articles, but very few people have read what I have had to say on this point, and some people who have read my stuff have sent me vitriolic e-mails disagreeing with the various positions I have taken on tax evasion.
The Picket Line:
The IRS Oversight Board released its own survey on tax evasion this year, and although it used fairly loaded questions, it seemed to show a lot more sympathy for tax evasion than your surveys have.
For instance, only 72% of Americans surveyed “completely agree” that “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.”
Do you think that this indicates a stronger bias toward taxpaying amongst the business professionals, students and educators you survey than in the population in general, or is there some other explanation?
Robert McGee:
The two surveys are not directly comparable, although it is interesting to compare the various views.
My surveys were targeted at specific audiences, whereas the IRS surveys targeted a more general audience.
Also, the IRS survey asked the views of Americans, whereas my surveys solicited the views of non-Americans, for the most part, although some surveys that have not yet been published solicited the views of various Americans, including members of the Florida Institute of Certified Public Accountants and various student groups.
I do not think you can say categorically that the results of the IRS survey are different from the results I obtained.
The range of scores in my surveys was 1 to 7, so the argument could be made that anyone who answered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 for at least one of the 18 statements believes that tax evasion is ethically justified in at least some cases.
If one takes that position, then one can conclude that more than 90 percent of the survey participants believe that tax evasion is justified in some circumstances, since fewer than 10 percent of the respondents put a 7 in all 18 slots.
But my surveys also indicate that the vast majority of respondents believe there is some ethical duty to pay taxes.
The survey was conducted during tax season earlier this year, and targeted “1,000 taxpayer households that were representative of the country, along with a supplemental sample of 101 individuals who had visited an IRS Taxpayer Assistance Center (TAC).”
The results of the survey were weighted to try to make them more closely represent the taxpaying public at large.
They then divided these responders into six roughly-equally-sized “taxpayer segments” and tallied survey results for each group separately.
They characterized these six groups as follows:
Confident and In Control
Tech Adopters
Seeking Assistance
Intimidated by the Process
Life in Transition
Concerned About Privacy
Most of the questions were not of much interest to us here, but a few were.
For instance, those surveyed were asked if they agreed with a statement about their “civic duty to pay my fair share of taxes”:
“It’s my civic duty to pay my fair share of taxes.”
taxpayer segment
% who agree
Total All Taxpayers
94%
Confident & In Control
100%
Seeking Assistance
99%
Life in Transition
69%
Tech Adopters
97%
Intimidated by the Process
97%
Concerned About Privacy
99%
94% of those surveyed “strongly/somewhat agree” with the statement “It’s my civic duty to pay my fair share of taxes”.
Only about half of the remainder “strongly/somewhat disagree” with the rest refusing to answer or neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
The wording of the question is vague enough to allow for different interpretations — after all, even I think that it’s everyone’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes (I just happen to think that this fair share is zero).
But I think it may be useful as an indication of how receptive people might be to arguments for tax resistance.
If so, the information about how different “taxpayer segments” answered this question will be useful to tax resistance outreach efforts.
As you can see from the table, the “Life in Transition” segment was much less likely than any other group to agree with the “civic duty to pay” statement.
Who are these people?
Here’s what the report says about them:
These taxpayers are more likely than average to use a paid preparer and are one of the groups most likely to have received a refund anticipation loan.
They are also the most likely group to say they have had a lot of significant changes in their life recently, more likely than average to say they are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and by a large margin…, the least likely to agree that it is their civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.
They are also the most likely segment to say they know how to get in touch with the IRS for help and are more likely than average to have done so over the last two years for help with tax law questions, earned income tax credit issues, and responding to an IRS notice or letter.
They are slightly more likely than average to prefer in-person service over self assistance.
The taxpayers in this segment are the youngest of the six, below average in income, but slightly more likely to be college educated.
This segment also reflects the highest concentration of women and the most likely segment to have recently married.
These taxpayers not only need services from the IRS; they also have the most financial difficulties of any taxpayer segment.
This group of taxpayers is particularly challenging for the IRS.… [T]his group of taxpayers indicates a slightly stronger preference for in-person service over self-service.
Nevertheless, given their younger age profile and higher education levels, there may be opportunities for the IRS to move these taxpayers more toward Internet-based solutions.
Two additional questions show taxpayer attitudes about how fair the tax system is, and how well the IRS is doing at administering the tax system fairly:
“The IRS ensures all taxpayers pay their fair share.”
taxpayer segment
% who agree
Total All Taxpayers
39%
Confident & In Control
57%
Seeking Assistance
67%
Life in Transition
36%
Tech Adopters
31%
Intimidated by the Process
25%
Concerned About Privacy
13%
People are not very confident that others are paying their fair share.
This can be used as a wedge for those of us promoting tax resistance, as perceptions that others are getting away with not paying their “fair share” are a powerful incentive for people to reexamine their own willingness to pay.
A related question shows a similar lack of confidence in the fairness of the tax system and of the IRS:
“The IRS is doing a good job of making the tax system fair to everyone.”
taxpayer segment
% who agree
Total All Taxpayers
31%
Confident & In Control
43%
Seeking Assistance
57%
Life in Transition
31%
Tech Adopters
22%
Intimidated by the Process
14%
Concerned About Privacy
15%
The IRS Oversight Board has released the results of their latest “Taxpayer Attitude Survey.”
The numbers haven’t changed much since .
Here’s a bit of data that people encouraging tax resistance might find helpful:
How much influence does each of the following factors have on whether you report and pay your taxes honestly?
Factor
A great deal of influence
Somewhat of an influence
Very little influence
Not at all an influence
Don’t know/No response
Fear of an audit
35%
26%
14%
21%
4%
Belief that your neighbors are reporting and paying honestly
20%
23%
16%
36%
5%
3rd parties reporting your income (e.g., wages, interest, dividends to the IRS
40%
27%
12%
17%
3%
Your personal integrity
76%
15%
4%
3%
3%
Some newfangled neuropsychological research indicates that similar regions of the brain “light up” in people when they donate money to a good cause voluntarily and when money is involuntarily taken from them for the same good cause.
People are wrapping big stories around small data points with this one, but it may give some insight into the psychology of taxpaying:
The IRS Oversight Board just released their latest Taxpayer Attitude Survey.
The headline they’re pushing for it goes something like this: “Nine Out of Ten Americans Say It Is ‘Not At All’ Acceptable To Cheat on Taxes.”
For the most part, the news media is going along with that.
And since this coincides with the embarrassing tax dodging of members of Obama’s proposed cabinet, we can expect these survey results to get more than usual play in the media.
But the survey uses loaded terms in its questions in order to provoke the results it reports.
It is not so much meant to measure taxpayer attitudes as to shape them by manufacturing and publicizing a consensus.
For example, the question that generated the survey’s most-touted result was:
How much, if any, do you think is an acceptable amount to cheat on your income taxes?
By using the loaded word “cheat” which by definition implies unacceptable behavior, the survey almost guarantees that respondents will label the behavior as “not at all” acceptable.
Other questions follow the same pattern:
It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes.
(Do you completely agree, mostly agree, mostly disagree, or completely disagree?)
Well, if the question already assumes that the share is fair, what is there to disagree with?
Even I think that it’s every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes; I just think that fair share is zero.
Tax collectors recognize that the perception of social norms of tax paying or tax evasion are very important considerations when an individual is deciding whether or not to cough up money on demand.
The IRS is hoping, with tools like this survey and the help of a lazy news media, to make it appear that taxpaying and condemnation of tax evaders is the social norm.
The 
