Why is Tax Avoidance Immoral? Ethics, Metaethics and Taxes

Abstract

Along with intensified efforts to combat aggressive tax planning, observed at the international, the EU and national levels, the question of moral status of tax avoidance becomes acute. We are far from consensus as to how it should be answered.The main purpose of this paper is to present and defend against certain counterarguments the argument following the pattern of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative in order to make a case for immorality of tax avoidance. This is done against the backdrop of previous meta-ethical remarks, concerning ethical strategies built to approach the problem of tax avoidance and its moral status.The thrust of the argument is that tax avoidance infringes the Kant's moral principle – the Formula of Universal Law. The latter essentially demands that the agent’s rule of behavior (maxim) be such that it could be universalized without contradiction (or, as a matter of fact, any other offence to reason). A taxpayer engaged in tax avoidance violates internal rationality of the legal system and contradicts himself – his ‘maxim’ cannot be generalized. He assumes the existence of the law but acts in a way which if universally adopted, would make the law dysfunctional or nonexistent.In a Kantian vein, the application of the categorical imperative to tax avoidance shows two aspects: egalitarian and dignitarian. These aspects are concurrently: typical for any elaboration of an argument following Kant’s line of reasoning and characteristic for the present-day reflection on law.