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A couple days ago, I got a message from a friend, asking how I respond to people who claim that taxes are Satan’s plan. Honestly, my instinct would be to respond, “That’s stupid,” block the person on Twitter, and get on with my life.

But that doesn’t work in every circumstance. I mean, if your interlocutor is standing in the checkout line next to you, blocking isn’t really an issue. And if your interlocutor is, I don’t know, your father-in-law, calling him stupid may not be the optimal approach. (And honestly, if the person is speaking in good faith, dismissing them like that is rude and unfair.[fn1])

So how would I address a good faith assertion that taxation is Satan’s plan? Depending on the person, I’d probably take one of a couple routes:

What Is Satan’s Plan?

The first thing I’d do, probably, is ask the person to explain what they understand Satan’s plan to be. Based on my many years of being Mormon and attending church, my guess is they’ll say something to the effect of, Satan’s plan was to take away people’s agency so that they would all be saved.[fn2]

(There’s no guarantee that they’ll answer like that, of course. And if they say something like, Satan’s plan was to impose a graduated income tax on people, well, you might just have to walk away from that conversation, because I don’t really know where you’d go from there.)

Once you get to the definition, there are two main points that I’d draw out, though the order probably doesn’t matter.

Consequences Don’t Eliminate Agency. As best I can tell, the assertion that taxes = loss of agency = Satan’s plan relies on the fact that if you don’t pay your taxes, you’ll face punishment by the government.

And that’s absolutely true.[fn3] You’ll most likely face interest and penalties calculated based on the amount by which you underpay. In certain circumstances, you may even face criminal prosecution. But the coercive power of the government can certainly be brought to bear on you if you underpay.

I’m not clear, though, on how that vitiates agency. You retain the ability to not file tax returns, to not pay your taxes, or to not pay the full amount you want. There is literally nobody standing over you, forcing your hand to write a check.[fn4]

Nope. You have full agency when it comes to paying taxes. You can pay your taxes, or you can choose not to pay them and face the consequences.

And the idea that the choices we make with our agency have consequences we can’t control is fully consonant with Mormon theology. We read it in 2 Nephi:

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

We read it in For the Strength of Youth:

While you are free to choose your course of action, you are not free to choose the consequences. Whether for good or bad, consequences follow as a natural result of the choices you make. Some sinful behavior may bring temporary, worldly pleasure, but such choices delay your progress and lead to heartache and misery. Righteous choices lead to lasting happiness and eternal life. Remember, true freedom comes from using your agency to choose obedience; loss of freedom comes from choosing disobedience.

We can even read it in contemporary General Authority discourse. For instance:

We are commanded to keep the laws of God, and a way is provided for us to be obedient to each of them. While we may use our agency to obey or to disobey, we are not free to choose the consequences of our disobedience.

All Laws Are Coercive. Further, the coercive power of the state underlies all law. How do taxes differ from, for example, laws against murder? Against property crimes? Laws that enforce contracts? I mean, those laws don’t prevent individuals from murdering, from steal, or from breaking contracts. But if taxes are so coercive as to eliminate our agency, all law must be equally agency-stealing and, as such, Satanic.

The Church Officially Supports Taxation

I mean, it hasn’t weighed in on things like the optimal tax rate or the optimal tax base. But the church requires its members to pay their taxes to remain in good standing.[fn5] From Handbook 2:

Church members who refuse to file a tax return, pay required income taxes, or comply with a final judgment in a tax case are in direct conflict with the law and with the teachings of the Church. Such members may be ineligible for a temple recommend and should not be called to positions of principal responsibility in the Church. Members who are convicted of willfully violating tax laws are subject to Church discipline to the extent warranted by the circumstances.

I mean, it strikes me as deeply improbable that if the church is God’s true church, it would assert that members who fail to comply with Satan’s plan would be in direct conflict with the church’s teachings. It doesn’t seem too far a step to see the church’s support of taxpaying as evidence that taxes are not, in fact, Satan’s plan. And, in fact, Rex Lee quoted President Harold B. Lee for just that conclusion:

For me, the most consistently dismaying lack of individual integrity in this respect is the failure of rather large numbers of American citizens to pay their income taxes. Equally dismaying are the reasons given by some of these people. The two most common are that the income tax is either unconstitutional or (in the case of some LDS Church members) inconsistent with gospel principles. Each of these positions is absurd…. And the notion that the anti-income tax position is rooted in gospel principles is equally insupportable in light of President Harold B. Lee’s statement describing as “vicious and wicked” the practice of those “who are taking the law into their own hands by refusing to pay their income tax because they have some political disagreement with constituted authorities.”

In President Lee’s (the prophet, not the university president) full statement, he calls those who refuse to pay their taxes “wolves among the flock, trying to lead some who are weak and unwary among Church members,” not an auspicious statement of support for the idea that taxes are Satan’s plan.

Will taking these two lines of discussion be more productive than just saying, “That’s stupid” and hitting the block button? No idea—I don’t know your in-laws, after all—but it’s at least worth the conversation.

[fn1] Yeah, I agree that there are limited circumstances in which someone could make that assertion in good faith. But there are, nonetheless, circumstances where they might. Like, an old high school acquaintance of mine once mentioned on Facebook that he thought the income tax didn’t apply to him, based on some kind of (tbf, stupid) tax protestor argument. But he didn’t have a background in law or tax—he’d heard something that matched his worldview and that was phrased convincingly. A simple explanation of how the tax law works and why what he’d heard was wrong—one that wasn’t judgmental or condescending—put that wrong idea to rest.

[fn2] I don’t think that’s an inarguable reading: I think, based on Moses 4:1-2, that you’d have decent ground to argue that one of the principal problems with the plan Satan presented was that he wanted the glory. That seems to be a significant difference between what he proposes and what Jesus proposes. The idea of agency doesn’t really come up until the next verse, when Narrator God says Satan would eliminate people’s agency. Still, while I think parsing that is interesting, it’s likely irrelevant to the question of whether taxation is Satan’s plan.

[fn3] Well, it’s at least theoretically true. In practice, there’s at least a decent chance you won’t face significant consequences. In 2017, the IRS only audited 0.5% of tax returns. I mean, if you don’t file a return, or your income doesn’t match your W-2 and your 1099s, you’re probably more likely to be audited, but still: 0.5%.

[fn4] Sure, wage withholding, but you can minimize or eliminate that if you want. (You shouldn’t, but you can.) Or you can choose not to earn money (or own property, if you think the property tax is Satan’s plan, or buy stuff if you’re worried the problem is the sales tax).

[fn5] Well, income taxes, at least (though the previous paragraph, discussing members’ obligations to pay their taxes doesn’t limit itself to income tax). I’ve always found that interesting, though I suspect it’s not creating an intentional difference between income and other taxes as much as it is reflecting on the fact that whoever drafted the Handbook wasn’t a tax policy person.