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Taxes are not some external force that the evil government is applying to us. They're part of the social contract binding a society together. The more effort

Taxes are not some external force that the evil government is applying to us. They're part of the social contract binding a society together. The more effort people spend avoiding taxes, the more complicated the tax system will get as it attempts to close those loopholes. The more complicated it gets, the harder it is to form a social contract that represents the best interest of the nation.

jacques_chester 14y ago
> Taxes are not some external force that the evil government is applying to us. They're part of the social contract binding a society together. Which is orthogonal to whether it is moral to arrange your affairs to pay only what is legally owed. > The more effort people spend avoiding taxes, the more complicated the tax system will get as it attempts to close those loopholes. Which is also orthogonal to whether it is moral to arrange your affairs to pay only what is legally owed.
- shardling 14y ago
  No, that is the very point. We encode the social contract in a system of rules. When you deliberately manipulate those rules to avoid the spirit or original intent of the contract, then you are breaking that contract, regardless of whether it is legal or not. This is the framework under which I consider tax avoidance to be unethical -- obviously if you do not support the society in the first place, you might disagree.
  - jacques_chester 14y ago
    > We encode the social contract in a system of rules. When you deliberately manipulate those rules to avoid the spirit of the contract, then you are breaking that contract, regardless of whether it is legal or not. Then change the rules. We have a mechanism for that purpose. It is not the courts.
    - shardling 14y ago
      My god man, it's like you didn't even read my earlier post. If you disagree with me, put forth an argument, but you raised the point like I hadn't already mentioned it. >The more effort people spend avoiding taxes, the more complicated the tax system will get as it attempts to close those loopholes. The more complicated it gets, the harder it is to form a social contract that represents the best interest of the nation. Also, I hadn't mentioned the courts once, and in fact stressed multiple times that I'm not talking about the legality of the situation.
Gormo 14y ago
> They're part of the social contract binding a society together. This is an absurdity; what binds a society together is people forming actual relationships of mutual benefit with one another. Complex, formal institutions are an afterthought, and even more of an afterthought is paying some precise percentage of your income to the specific people who operate one of those institutions, so they can can pay others to construct roads (as though no other means could be found to facilitate the pouring of asphalt), or build prisons for the incarceration of people who ingest particular chemicals that some think are per se bad. If anything, empowering excessively centralized institutions creates intense factional polarization which undermines societies, inhibiting the formation of substantive relationships and communities instead of sustaining them. Our present "culture war" is a clear example of this. The sole substantive basis for functional societies is the willingness of people to participate in them. Theoretical doctrines of "social contracts" and "nations" are just post-hoc rationalizations.

jacques_chester 14y ago

> Taxes are not some external force that the evil government is applying to us. They're part of the social contract binding a society together. Which is orthogonal to whether it is moral to arrange your affairs to pay only what is legally owed. > The more effort people spend avoiding taxes, the more complicated the tax system will get as it attempts to close those loopholes. Which is also orthogonal to whether it is moral to arrange your affairs to pay only what is legally owed.

shardling 14y ago
No, that is the very point. We encode the social contract in a system of rules. When you deliberately manipulate those rules to avoid the spirit or original intent of the contract, then you are breaking that contract, regardless of whether it is legal or not. This is the framework under which I consider tax avoidance to be unethical -- obviously if you do not support the society in the first place, you might disagree.
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  > We encode the social contract in a system of rules. When you deliberately manipulate those rules to avoid the spirit of the contract, then you are breaking that contract, regardless of whether it is legal or not. Then change the rules. We have a mechanism for that purpose. It is not the courts.
  - shardling 14y ago
    My god man, it's like you didn't even read my earlier post. If you disagree with me, put forth an argument, but you raised the point like I hadn't already mentioned it. >The more effort people spend avoiding taxes, the more complicated the tax system will get as it attempts to close those loopholes. The more complicated it gets, the harder it is to form a social contract that represents the best interest of the nation. Also, I hadn't mentioned the courts once, and in fact stressed multiple times that I'm not talking about the legality of the situation.

Gormo 14y ago

> They're part of the social contract binding a society together. This is an absurdity; what binds a society together is people forming actual relationships of mutual benefit with one another. Complex, formal institutions are an afterthought, and even more of an afterthought is paying some precise percentage of your income to the specific people who operate one of those institutions, so they can can pay others to construct roads (as though no other means could be found to facilitate the pouring of asphalt), or build prisons for the incarceration of people who ingest particular chemicals that some think are per se bad. If anything, empowering excessively centralized institutions creates intense factional polarization which undermines societies, inhibiting the formation of substantive relationships and communities instead of sustaining them. Our present "culture war" is a clear example of this. The sole substantive basis for functional societies is the willingness of people to participate in them. Theoretical doctrines of "social contracts" and "nations" are just post-hoc rationalizations.