As far as I know the Church teaches that it is generally morally necessary to pay your taxes. This is apparently true even when tiny percentages of the government’s budget go towards immoral purposes (funding abortion centers). In light of the current health care situation and the federal government’s homosexual propaganda - is it still morally necessary to pay federal taxes? Who decides if it is or not? Is it up to each individual to decide?
Rom 13:7 Render therefore to all men their dues. Tribute, to whom tribute is due: custom, to whom custom: fear, to whom fear: honour, to whom honour.
(tribute = tax)
Looking at this from a moral theological point of view, if your taxes pay for evil actions, your participation in those acts is evil. Because of the fact that your taxes are diluted so far, that material participation is mediate, not immediate…and the proximity of the mediate material cooperation is extremely, exceptionally remote. There is no way that you would need to go to confession for paying your federal taxes, a portion of which are used toward immoral ends.
On the other hand, the
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church has this to say:
c. **The right to resist **
** 400. **
Recognizing that natural law is the basis for and places limits on positive law means admitting that it is legitimate to resist authority should it violate in a serious or repeated manner the essential principles of natural law. Saint Thomas Aquinas writes that “one is obliged to obey … insofar as it is required by the order of justice”.[823] Natural law is therefore the basis of the right to resistance.
There can be many different concrete ways this right may be exercised; there are also many different
ends that may be pursued. Resistance to authority is meant to attest to the validity of a different way of looking at things, whether the intent is to achieve partial change, for example, modifying certain laws, or to fight for a radical change in the situation.
**401. *
The Church’s social doctrine indicates the criteria for exercising the right to resistance: “Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave and prolonged violation of fundamental rights, 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted, 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders, 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution”.[824] Recourse to arms is seen as an extreme remedy for putting an end to a “manifest, long-standing tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country”.[825] The gravity of the danger that recourse to violence entails today makes it preferable in any case that passive resistance *be practised, which is “a way more conformable to moral principles and having no less prospects for success”.[826]
The way I see it is that an individual tax strike would not be justified or moral, in as much as civil authority has a legitimate authority to collect taxes justly to support the common good. An individual tax strike has no possibility of causing that civil authority to change its immoral policies.
However, if a sufficient quantity of people were to do so, sufficiently large to defund the government and prevent its ability to pursue immoral ends and potentially to change its policies, then it would fall into the category of “passive resistance.” But read the above extract to see all of the factors that are necessary for a resistance movement to be morally acceptable (even a passive, non-violent resistance movement):
*]there is certain, grave and prolonged violation of fundamental rights,
*]all other means of redress have been exhausted,
*]such resistance will not provoke worse disorders,
*]there is well-founded hope of success;
*]it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution
In a country that has periodic elections, it is extremely difficult to meet all 5 of the above criteria.
So, in theory, it is possible that a widespread tax revolt could be moral…but, in practice, it would be very difficult to justify such a thing.
With the new health laws I am curious myself.
