I will be unhelpful and say it depends. Some taxes aren't moral in the first place, e.g. poll taxes based on race. It seems like it may be fair to try to avoid taxes that are levied to intentionally to expropriate and oppress a given social group, e.g. special taxies levied against Europe's Jews across the Middle Ages. However, this is not always the case. I say "may" because states might try to tax the wealthy, an identity group, for valid reasons related to social stability and inequality. For such a tax to be immoral it needs to specifically target people based on characteristics such as race, sex, ethnicity, religion, etc. for the purposes of extorting them.

For example, the Jizya, which was designed as a financial penalty to get Jews and Christians to convert to Islam is an immoral tax under this criteria. But a tax on smokers is not, because the goal isn't coercion or oppression, but to benefit public health and social welfare. Smoking isn't essential to human freedom in the way religion is.

Likewise, high earning groups in the US (I believe Indians are currently the highest earning demographic) can't claim the progressive income tax is such a discriminatory tax because it is aiming to take money from those most able to pay, not based on group identity. Intent is important here, because in our current context, I can certainly see people trying to claim that regressive sales and payroll taxes are biased against minority groups who happen to be low income, and yet those taxes don't have the same immoral intent and are essential for finding state/local services that the poor benefit from most.

Likewise, if you're truly destitute, in the same way you can be justified in stealing a loaf of bread, or breaking into a cabin when lost in the wilderness, you might be justified in avoiding taxes. You don't need to give up your very last dollar and go hungry.

In general though, I think it is a high bar to say you shouldn't pay taxes. Without the state, people don't have protection from expropriation or oppression. It's an important source of negative freedom. The state is also a source of reflexive freedom through its provision of education and through its intervention in markets to stop monopoly powers from controlling them. The state or state-like institutions are essential to provisioning the prerequisites of human happiness and freedom, even if some states fail at this or outright degrade both. The fact is that strong national defense, rule of law, and universal education has never once evolved in any locale without a state with taxing authority creating them. That gives the state a lot of precedence in claims on citizens' resources, but this claim is by no means absolute.

I'd agree with Hegel's statement that an individual should have duties to the state in proportion to the rights they receive from it. That said, if you have a poorly performing state, you need to give it resources for it to develop into a state that can give you more rights, which is why the precedence will tend towards the state, but not absolutely.

deleted because off topic

Let’s presuppose a society without government and therefore without tax.

The rich constantly being raided by the poor would be but the norm until a parity was achieved where this looting from either side would not be necessary.

That society would more or less be anarchy in its purest form. However the human condition would perforce such a society to save for rainy days or have reserve for harder days whether or not they materialise. This useful hoarding of resources (grain, gold, beer materials and tea materials) would enable tea to be served during scarce times or unpredictable weather phenomena such as draught.

Tax serves more than simple reserves as governments achieve this currently through various types of bonds and investable pension pots in the private sector.

The purpose of the wealthy enterprises in tax evasion acquits it of tax duty for corporations future investment or the enterprises future ambitions.

The grey area remains as some can end up in prison if such attempts are over obscured by the accounting which leads to scandals and sometimes the cessation of all business activity in the case of Enron

@NOS4A2

I will be unhelpful and say it depends . . . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yours is among the very best posts I have read on TPF. :clap: