Isn’t there a problem of theft here? (More serious than merely not obeying the law.)

And what about the categorical imperative?

I don’t think this is theft. Land cannot be stolen, and I kept the money they demand for it with me, in the ordinary way people do, and about that I said that logically there is room to be lenient here.
The categorical imperative says to do what you would want to become a general law. That’s what this person is doing here. The general law is that people obey the law, up to a certain amount of cutting corners. That is proper, and that is fitting in the eyes of most of the public, and in my eyes too.

According to that, does someone who randomly evades taxes also not violate theft?

There is room for that reasoning, though there is a distinction. Taxes are payment for services you receive, and so there it’s not just obedience to the law but a kind of theft. By contrast, payment for blue-and-white parking is not payment for a service but obedience to the law (even if the municipality represents the public, which owns the land).

I don’t understand why parking in a blue-and-white zone is not payment for a service. Part of the municipality’s budget is based on income from blue-and-white parking payments, and that makes it possible to reduce the municipal property tax.

I don’t think that’s how it works. It’s a desire to get additional income that will be added to the budget. But that doesn’t mean it is payment for a service. Is a traffic fine also payment for a service? That too is added to the state budget.

Why park in “Blue and White” when there’s plenty of parking in the “Zionist Camp,” since all the traffic has already left it? 🙂

Best regards, Avi Gabbay

Following up on this, how is blue-and-white parking different from parking in a private lot that charges an hourly fee for its parking?

In a private lot there is an owner of the space and he rents it out for payment, like any rental. But blue-and-white parking is a kind of tax and not payment of parking fees to an owner. After all, I too am one of the owners, so you can cut corners once in a while like everyone else (when that is the accepted practice).

That argument applies to every tax as well (VAT, income tax, etc.). Why is income tax considered payment for a service and parking tax not?

First, regarding every tax I would write something similar to this (and I think I have written that as well). But beyond that, income tax is set according to the total services in relation to the revenue desired. Parking is opportunistic collection and not part of the overall revenue calculation.

You wrote above that there is a difference between parking tax and a regular tax:
“Taxes are payment for services you receive, and so there it’s not just obedience to the law but a kind of theft. By contrast, payment for blue-and-white parking is not payment for a service but obedience to the law.”
I think that income from parking payments is also, all in all, expected on an annual level, and when they come to plan the budget for the coming year they presumably also take income from parking payments into account.

Obviously, and still there is a difference between revenue that is taken into account and payment for a service. After all, what is taken into account regarding parking payments is actual payment, and if people tend to cut corners, that too is part of the budget calculation they make.

But people also tend to cut corners on income tax and VAT payments, and budget planning assumes there will be a certain percentage of ordinary tax evaders. And regarding payment for a service, why is paying income tax considered payment for a service, while paying parking tax is not?

Let me clarify again. The tax calculation is at the basis of the budget (the taxes are originally imposed according to the needs of the budget). Blue-and-white parking payments are opportunistic collection, and only after they are collected does the budget take them into account.
Since that is so, with a regular tax there is reason to say it is consideration for a service and any corner-cutting is theft, whereas with parking, corner-cutting only causes a lower calculation for budgetary needs.
As stated, this distinction is only one side of the issue. I noted that there are also reasons not to distinguish, in either direction (to forbid corner-cutting in both, or to permit it in both).

I thought to suggest a distinction: that the purpose of payment for blue-and-white parking is not like the purpose of other taxes, but rather to prevent one person from taking up a public parking spot for a long time. That is, in principle blue-and-white spaces were supposed to be free, like any municipal public resource (parks, sports courts, playgrounds, etc.), only in order to ensure the fairest possible distribution of this resource, a minimal symbolic payment is required for it. As evidence, the hourly price for blue-and-white parking is nowhere near the market price of an hour of parking in a private lot. If the goal were tax collection through parking spaces, the price should have been similar to the market price. Therefore, someone who cuts corners on parking payments does not harm the public’s tax-collection efforts, but only its mechanism for managing the allocation of parking resources.

Indeed, there is room for this reasoning. It joins what I wrote above, since this “tax” is not imposed equally but according to whoever wants parking. That is the basis of my claim that it is not a tax but opportunistic collection. What you are adding now is the specific explanation for this opportunistic collection, namely that it is intended to allocate parking time. Entirely possible.

If I am not mistaken, there is no legal prohibition on parking in a blue-and-white zone without paying; rather, whoever gets caught pays a fine (just as there is no prohibition on driving above the speed limit). Therefore one could take the risk and park in a blue-and-white zone without paying, and there would be no prohibition in that.