As direct action and protests mount around the country, the idea to stop paying taxes is being circulated. But is that the right action?
Another day, another set of destruction by someone who runs this country but has the temperament of a child, plus a ketamine-fueled co-president who thinks that firing people is the way to prosperity.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with the price of eggs, but surely everything will be fixed by Day 1.
Meanwhile, the resistance on the street is still finding its footing. (Thankfully, the resistance in the courts is doing an okay job.) The one-day economic blackout had a minimal economic impact according to reasonable sources, but that wasn’t entirely the point, as I argued at the time. Future, more direct, actions will potentially have more of an impact.
One way that people have been talking about resisting this would-be autocracy is by ceasing to pay taxes.
After all, if the government is crooked, then why give your money to fund it?
Let’s see.
Table of Contents
A brief history of tax evasion
Tax evasion has a long history.
The Constitution doesn’t mention anything about income taxes. That changed in 1913 when the 16th amendment was passed, but that didn’t stop the arguments. Proponents of Federalism stated that taxes should be imposed by state governments only.
More recently, the modern libertarian movement (adjacent in some ways to the Tea Party) have argued that taxes represent government overreach, which limits freedoms. The goal is to weaken the state so that they can increase their own personal liberty.
Some of these arguments get a little loopy. The IRS has a list of a whole host of these “frivolous” arguments. (For what it’s worth, the list hasn’t been pulled down yet.)
But a lot of the historical arguments come down to the belief that the government mismanages its money and spends wastefully, and so shouldn’t get the money from hardworking Americans.
What are the implications of not paying taxes?
If we are considering not paying taxes because we don’t like how the government is spending (or not spending) its money, then we most closely resemble the libertarian argument above. So it’s important to recognize that.
So taking ourselves out of the equation, what do we see when we look at the libertarians?
What I see are people who believe that they know better than the government how the money should be spent.
And that’s where I stop. Full stop. Because the government adjudicates the needs of over 300 million people, many of which have little to no connection to your life. How are we to know how this money should be spent best?
Sure, money is going to things we may not support. But the money is going to things that plenty of people do support. So why would we be right and not them?
More to the point, the way our system is set up, who do you think is going to be hurt first when money is taken away: the wealthy or those in need? I think you know the answer.
The oligarchs and billionaires will be fine. But people who need help will find there is less help to be had. That doesn’t sound like a sound moral strategy to me.
The toddler in the room
Ultimately, the libertarian argument always reminds me of a toddler, one who’s red-faced and yelling, “I don’t want to do it!” It’s purely focused on the self, without any awareness that they live in a society and benefit from it. These are people who are delusional enough to think that they are “self-sufficient“.
Let me repeat: we live in society, and are interdependent on each other. Unless you’re living in the woods and foraging for your own food (and you built your own home from trees you chopped) you are benefiting from society. And even then, society got you there.
With benefits come responsibilities. We may not like all the of the responsibilities, but that’s the system we have. Trying to get out of it just reeks of self-interest.
Now don’t get me wrong, if you want to try to affect someone’s bottom line, then organize around particular companies. Boycott Walmart. Boycott Target. Boycott Amazon. But don’t boycott the Federal government. It won’t do what you think it will.
Epilogue
A lot of the idea for this post came from an email I received from Choose Democracy. It had the following call-out:
But when I clicked the link, I was surprised and a bit gratified by the equivocal nature of the website:
We believe that taxation is an important pillar of healthy democracy. Our position, consistent with US American values, is that we do not give money to a King, but a democratic state.
As always, the disappointing part of being (politically) on the side of empathy is that there’s always nuance, and nuance makes things complex and not very slogan-worthy.
Then again, we’re not toddlers.
