Governments hate it when you succeed at escaping their tyrannical grasp, so we have been witnessing extensive efforts by the feds to curtail tax dodging and avoidance. This has led to some considerable pressure exerted on banks in Switzerland, Lichtenstein and other places with serious bank secrecy laws to release the names of those who bank there hoping to escape the IRS.

Extorting money from the citizenry is the bread and butter of governments. No serious effort has ever been made, even in America, to find and implement ways of funding the legal system without using extortionist methods. Yet, how could one have an unalienable right to one’s life and liberty and such while government puts a gun to your head, saying, “Your money or you go to jail”?

Tax resistance may be morally defended on grounds nearly identical to resisting any kind of aggression against oneself. If you’re accosted and threatened, you have the right of self-defense, derived from the basic right one has to life. This also holds if an attack is aimed at confiscating your resources.

Government sanction of conscription may be, even ought to be, resisted. Draconian cases could be cited here, involving slaves or concentration camp victims trying to escape. There is no moral doubt about whether such resistance is ethically justified (although in nearly all such cases government apologists cited either the doctrine of implied collective consent or invoking some “greater good”.).

Where such systems err is described in the Declaration of Independence, where, instead of governments, individuals have sovereignty. Or, in other words, instead of divine rights for monarchs, it’s individual human beings who have basic, unalienable rights, including to their lives, liberty and property (the term Thomas Jefferson used in an early draft of the Declaration based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which referred to “property and pursuing happiness.”).

Taxation, which is extortion, has no place, any more than serfdom, in a just legal order. So whether it’s ethically justified to dodge or avoid taxation should not pose an insurmountably difficult moral problem. (There are, of course, considerations as to the proper means by which tax laws, as other unjust laws within a substantially just system of laws, would need to be resisted.)

What we face here is akin to what confronted abolitionists in the era of chattel slavery, who were often urged to refrain from using radical means in resistance. Arguably, one size does not fit all in how oppression of any kind ought to be resisted, opposed or fought.

Different victims could be justified in taking very different steps to counter oppression, including taxation. For some it would be most appropriate to make use of the available political processes; for some, other means could be best. Taxation could, for some, be a minor although impermissible imposition, especially if they are wealthy enough so it makes little difference in the way they choose to live their lives. The context is relevant to how one is justified in addressing oppression. (For a simple example, for a large, powerful individual, being assaulted could be nearly inconsequential and not worth spending the time and resources to resist.)

Although there could be variations in how one ought to resist (dodge, avoid, legally contest, etc.) taxation, those subject to the institution are ethically justified in making the effort to resist it. Yet, as with all matters of conduct involving other people, a sort of moral due process is required. One may not resist a trespasser by killing him, and that kind of consideration would apply in how one resists an evil such as taxation.

In any case, the often-voiced objections to tax dodging and tax avoidance are without merit.

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