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The Associated Press

Demonstrators protest outside an Alaska IRS office in 2005.

Featured Topic | Posted 21 weeks 3 days ago

What should the government do with tax resisters?

New York Times

If you think paying taxes is unfair, illegal or unconstitutional, then watch out -- the Justice Department is after you. Just as the IRS is getting into its perennial tax-season tough talk, Justice Department officials weighed in this week with a vow to ramp up efforts against “tax defiers" -- anybody who “seeks to deny and defy the fundamental validity of the tax laws.” What should the government do with tax defiers?

Ben likes: Surprisingly little evasion

Gary Becker/The Becker-Posner blog

wever, audits, punishments, and the other deterrence variables mentioned in the previous paragraphs do not fully explain why there is not much more tax evasion. I believe it is necessary to recognize that most people believe they have a duty, moral or otherwise, to report their taxable income more or less honestly. I intentionally say "more or less honestly" because a little cheating on taxes is usually considered to be ok, as long as it does not go too far. Individuals might not pay social security taxes on their payments to workers who clean their houses, and they might pay a mason in cash because he then gives them a lower price, but these same persons would be very reluctant to engage in large-scale tax evasion. Similarly, most people do not believe it is moral to steal money even when there is little chance they will be found out, and they feel obligated to obey many other laws, even when that entails inconvenience and cost to themselves. There would be considerably more crime if individuals only obeyed laws when the expected cost of being caught, adjusted for risk, exceeded the benefits from disobeying these laws. To some extent, people obey many laws, including tax laws, because most other persons are doing the same. If so, their behavior might change radically if they lost confidence that others would pay their taxes and obey other law

Joel likes: Dollar dissent

Village Voice

"You really have to go out of your way to go to jail. The IRS gives you all kinds of opportunities," to pay up and avoid repercussions, says Ed Hedemann, a leading tax resister. The risks are worthwhile, Hedemann insists, because "tax resistance has a direct impact on the government."

Federal budget experts are quick to disagree with him. Robert McIntyre heads Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit known to lean liberal. Nevertheless, he puts war tax resistance "somewhere between silly and evil." Silly, because if resistance were actually to rise to a felt level, the government would simply borrow the money it could not get from taxes to keep the war going. And evil, because resisters are "putting their share of the government on other people." (A bill to create a peace tax fund—a federally approved way to pay taxes but keep them away from the military—was introduced in the spring of 2002 and supported by a number of Congress members, including House leader Nancy Pelosi. It did not pass.)