Four Views on the Ethics of Tax Evasion

Abstract

A few years ago I published an article in the Journal of Business Ethics titled Three Views on the Ethics of Tax Evasion (McGee, 2006 ) . Actually, there are four views. The purpose of the present chapter is to update that article and discuss the view that was omitted. Most articles written on tax evasion are published in tax practitioner journals and take a practitioner or legal perspective. However, some authors have taken a philosophical approach (McGee, 1994a ) . One of the most comprehensive analyses on tax evasion from a philosophical perspective was a doctoral thesis written by Martin Crowe in 1944. The Journal of Accounting, Ethics & Public Policy published a series of articles on tax evasion from various religious, secular, and philosophical perspectives in 1998 and 1999. Most of those articles were also published in an edited book (McGee, 1998a ) . Since the publication of that book, a few other articles have addressed the issue of tax evasion from an ethical perspective. Those articles are discussed in the next section. The ethics of tax evasion can be examined from a number of perspectives. Some of these are of a religious nature while others are more secular and philosophical. One approach is to examine the relationship of the individual to the state. Another is the relationship between the individual and the taxpaying community or some subset thereof. A third is the relationship of the individual to God. In other words, if there is a duty to pay taxes, the duty is owed either to God, to the state or to some subgroup of the populations (taxpayers or some other group). Martin Crowe ( 1944 ) examined the literature on these approaches, which are the three main approaches that have been taken in the literature over the past fi ve centuries.