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Q&A: Tax Evasion

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Tax Evasion

Question

Apart from “the law of the kingdom is law,” is there a halakhic problem with tax evasion? 

Answer

Definitely. You receive services and do not pay for them. And communal enactments are valid even without “the law of the kingdom is law.”

Discussion on Answer

Eli (2023-05-22)

The fact that someone provided a service for me that I didn’t ask for doesn’t obligate me to pay him.
And according to your argument, there’s something problematic about a person who earns very little money and therefore pays very little tax.
And even if we accept the assumption that a person is obligated to pay for a service he didn’t ask for, what about someone who earns a lot of money and has already paid more than average in taxes? In that case, he has already paid for the services he received, and even paid too much. Why should he pay more if he earned more money?

Michi (2023-05-22)

Not true. You use that service, and therefore you must pay. This is the law of someone who goes down into another person’s field without permission, and every legal system understands it that way.
The payment level is determined by the institutions, so there is not necessarily a fixed rate here for a service, but rather a general (differential) payment for the full range of services. Even a person who earns a lot of money has not necessarily paid for the services he received. His ability to earn all that money exists only thanks to those services, and therefore the pricing is not necessarily fixed.

Eli (2023-05-23)

Do we really rule nowadays, in practical Jewish law, that in the case of someone who goes down into another person’s field without permission, the owner of the field has to pay? If I polish your shoes without you noticing, can I obligate you to pay me? That sounds very strange to me.
And it sounds even stranger if the one polishing your shoes is also the one who decides how much you’ll pay him for that benefit.
I agree that without an army, police, laws, and a legal system, it would be very difficult and maybe even impossible to earn money. But that is a very small percentage of all the services the state provides, and everyone receives them equally. It doesn’t make sense to charge two people who received the same service different prices. A painter will pay the same price as I do for paper, brushes, and paint, even though he can create from them a picture worth millions, and I can’t.
You could argue that in order to have a proper society, those who earn more should pay more, but that’s like saying that someone driving a car has to stop at a stop sign. A person driving at three in the morning in the middle of nowhere who didn’t stop did indeed break the law, but did not (it seems to me) violate a halakhic prohibition either (apart from “the law of the kingdom is law”)

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