Q&A: According to your approach, is it permitted to evade taxes?
According to your approach, is it permitted to evade taxes?
Question
A few days/weeks ago I asked why Bennett is not suspected of verbal deception, and why this is not considered corruption.
Your answer was as follows:
“Promises made before elections should already be taken with limited credibility, and everyone knows this. That’s what they all do, whether you like it or not. Especially since one can always say, ‘What you see from there, you don’t see from here.’”
If I follow your line of reasoning regarding monetary deception, then tax evasion is not corruption from a moral standpoint, and of course there is no “verbal deception” here either, because
everyone knows this. That’s what all self-employed people do, religious or secular — most evade taxes, whether you like it or not. And the state also knows that there is lots of unreported cash circulating. Especially since one can say that what you see from here, you don’t see from there, since it is known that a self-employed person who is not exempt pays much more than any salaried employee (value-added tax), and this is besides the fact that he is not entitled to the things many salaried employees receive — a pension fund, study fund, vacation days, sick days (almost all of these are the employer’s obligation as defined by state legislation).
If so, I conclude that according to your approach there is no point in distinguishing between verbal deception and monetary deception, and when it is known that verbal deception is sometimes legitimate, so too monetary deception is legitimate.
Answer
What does the Sabbatical year have to do with an omelet? This is a truly bizarre argument. Even if theft is commonplace, that does not make it permitted. But when you are talking about misleading people, that of course depends on the assumptions of the listeners and the accepted norms. Moreover, there is also the consideration of “what you see from here…”
For example, you should also ask why it is permitted to lie for the sake of peace, but forbidden to steal for the sake of peace.
There may perhaps be room to argue that an accepted level of evasion would not be forbidden, since not everyone evades and certainly not all of the tax. But even that is not correct in my opinion, and as above.