I guess its tax time again-- we all pay them because we have to… What did Jesus really mean by "render unto Ceasar’…A priest i know mentioned that taxes are a debatable area that the church has never defined as grave matter. Are we as catholics also obliged to pay them out of avoiding sin? The catechism says that not paying them is morally illicit. Does that mean mortal or venial?
I had a Catholic lawyer tell me that the current tax laws are unjust laws and we should try to get out of paying as much of them as we can! Of course, he wasn’t advocating breaking the law to do so. He was simply encouraging us to use every legal means possible to reduce our taxes owed.
I remember one of my teachers telling me that the Founding Fathers considered throwing in a maximum cap of 10% for federal income taxes in the Constitution. They quickly decided against it because they thought it might encourage the government to
raise taxes and 10% was far too high! (At the time, I think the federal income tax was 3%).
I’m not sure about the morality of not paying the taxes (whether it is mortal or venial), but I certainly would not want to sin against the eighth commandment by filling out a dishonest tax return. Lying in that regard, I would think, would be grave matter. Neither would I want to risk fines or imprisonment. That would seem, at the very least, an imprudent course of action.
So, from a moral standpoint, I think the grave matter would come from the lying that would likely be necessary to not pay your taxes rather than simply from not paying them (although CCC 2240 does list it as a “moral obligation”, it doesn’t say whether it is grave matter).
Personally, why risk it? To me, it’s not worth the money. Interesting question to think about, though.
