I see a lot of people in Western countries getting angry over people not paying their fair share of taxes and all that. Now I don’t know how it is in America, but where I come from (the Philippines), I sure as hell do not trust my government to use my tax money wisely.
In my country, politicians regularly “appropriate” millions of dollars from the national budget to buy mansions, supercars, private jets, jewelry, properties abroad, etc. while the poor die for lack of intubators. We already have a universal healthcare law and it doesn’t mean jack shit because all the money there goes to paying for some senator’s prostitutes or whatever.
There’s currently a proposed bill to lower corporate taxes in my country and I am fully behind it. The government already has enough money, and besides I trust hardworking businessmen more than politicians who just sit on their asses and lie to the people for a living. The issue here is not that the government doesn’t have enough funds, it’s that we need to elect responsible leaders. In my view, paying more taxes is not going to get those poor people into hospital beds, it just makes corrupt politicians more complacent. Honestly, I am in awe of you Americans that you trust your government so much to spend all those trillions of dollars wisely.
The only practical impediment to this is that I do not have a good enough tax lawyer to pull this off yet. But nevertheless, no taxation without representation right? I do not feel represented, so therefore…
To keep it brief: My Christian brother disagrees with the U.S. government’s spending on foreign matters. While this is valid, the word tells us we should pay taxes.
In my view, the U.S. affords us a wonderful constitution, generous tax deductions, Pell grants, due process, and more that set us apart and “offset” its radical spending.
What do you think as a Christian?
This is going to gloss over what said government did to make you consider them that bad, but with governments the world over being some of the most hated organizations in existence, this doesn't seem far fetched. I will however admit this was mostly motivated by China however.
The second point is that willingly paid taxes and taxes they have to extort out of you are different, and that while it might be a moral high ground, digging in your heels to not pay taxes is probably a bad idea, since they'll just drag you to jail.
The main point of what I'm saying is that that once a government does become bad enough, paying taxes becomes wrong as it's enabling them to continue being bad, and that you should do your best to avoid doing so, much like trying to boycott a company you cant fully avoid.
Edit: To everyone saying to move, I'd like to point out this was mostly based on China, where they're doing things genocidally bad, moving isn't an option for most, and while technically a democracy, is a single party state. Furthermore, I'm not Chinese, China just happens to be a good example of how bad things can get.
Some Protestant groups, like those represented by the conservative R.C. Sproul Jr and the Acton Institute, believe that even if the government does nothing but evil, one nonetheless is obligated to pay taxes to support it, because what the government does is not the responsibility of the people supporting it but the fault of the government itself. This is similar to but distinct from the material v.s. formal assistance issue discussed below.
Some Catholic groups, like those represented by the extremist Catholic Worker movement, support the refusal to pay taxes in many cases, in accordance with the rule of conscience. This is not technically different than mainstream Catholicism except that these extremist groups cultivate a spiritual culture that encourages members to question the fundamental aspects of their way of life and supports them even when mainstream society would (or does) condemn them, which makes the likelihood that members make choices like the decision to protest a government by refusing to pay taxes much more likely (since, whether or not they ought to morally, people will rarely take up stances that they know will ostracize them from their support network).
More official stances of the Roman Catholic Church tend to reference the differences between material and formal assistance and generally support refusal to pay taxes only as a method of opposing the whole of the government. Paying taxes to an immoral government is argued to be licit from several directions, including the mitigation of moral culpability do to duress (a weak argument), the distinction between material and formal support and vested interest in the public good (a strong argument when it applies), and the principle of double effect. In sum, Catholicism tends to support tax paying in general for most people living in most countries, but supports not paying taxes as a form of resistance in certain unusual circumstances. Basically "It depends". Again, the rule of conscience is the most typical method of actually determining answers within the Church, in combination with the Church's pastoral care and teaching authority.
Christian Pacifists, who oppose war unilaterally, often engage in war tax resistance. Many of them do so in legal ways, simply by reducing the amount of money they have below the taxable threshold (most Christian Pacifists live in countries where this is a thing). Such protestant denominations clearly believe that, at least in some cases, taxes ought to be denied to a government.
For most groups, this is a question of balancing the need to comply with righteous authority and serve the common good with the need to oppose evil and injustice in the world, it's just answered in different ways.
Independent Baptist groups, who hold the Bible as inerrant and the only revelation from God, believe that Mathew 22:16-22 indicates that we are to always give taxes to our government, whether they are good or bad. With this money Caesar could have helped people, or he could have used it to pay the guy who crucified Jesus.
Independent Baptist groups would also cite Romans 13:1 which says that all authority is ordained by God and is therefore worthy of our obedience.
Does the Bible specifically address any of these problems? War, Genicide, taxes, corporate greed, government tyranny.
I realized most of the teachings of the Bible seem to be individually based rather than addressing governments or organizations. Though shall not kill. Etc. but to me the bigger problems are with more corruption in large scale organizations and governments. To me war” is just organized murder on a large scale. I think everyone inherently knows not to murder, but if they do it in the name of a country they seem to think it is okay... Are these problems addressed by the Bible? I am not knowledgeable enough of it to know. It seems to me that if the Bible spoke out against governments they probably wouldn’t have tolerated it for so long. I just hear that government doesn’t like Christianity and Christians are constantly persecuted but really I don’t think Christianity is that opposed with governments and in fact it seems to often support them. Not to say that religion always works in tandem with the government but it seems like the religions that spoke out directly against rulers or governments seem to have been destroyed and the ones that tolerated it were the ones left. Some examples I wonder about. I welcome any criticism or corrections, I’m not an expert on the Bible;
Taxes - Jesus said give Caesar what is Caesar’s... wouldn’t it have been braver to say, don’t pay taxes to a corrupt government? That would have been radical. Maybe he did but this part was edited?
War - Does Jesus or the Bible in general ever condemn war? In fact God several times commands war. Yet thou shall not murder... Shouldn’t the Bible directly address that powerful nations should not invade smaller nations? Wouldn’t this have cleared up the Iraq war, Vietnam, Korea, etc. that are pretty clearly mistakes. If people at the time could have quoted this commandment then I think it would have kept us out of a lot of conflicts.
Government Tyranny - it’s true the Romans seemed to persecute the Christians but what was the response? Lay down and take it? Jesus did not seem to tell us to fight back against unjust governments, rather he seemed to say to follow the biblical laws and obey authority. But shouldn’t there be a commandment that condemns government tyranny specifically? Seems like Christians will continue to make excuses to speak up as long as the government allows us to go to church. And even then people quote the constitution over the Bible, because it seems to me that the Bible does not directly address how to handle a tyrannical government. Should people speak up? Organize? Obey?
Genicide - does the Bible specifically speak agains this? I don’t want to sound controversial but the Bible actually has several accounts where God commanded this. We can argue there were reasons for this (I won’t) but just to clear things up maybe the Bible could say “all genicide following Jericho will is forbidden” just so rulers can’t say they are doing Gods work (which of course they would not be!).
Corporate Greed - does the Bible speak out against corporate greed and power? It’s similar to tyrannical government but should specifically addressed in my opinion as it is such a problem throughout history.
Slavery - not just classic slavery but also when a country uses a poorer country to do slave labor like our products are made with. If this was a commandment specifically addressed I beleive people would not have as much excuse about not confronting it. Instead there seems to be several verses that talk owning slaves if I’m not mistaken? Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
Freedom of speech - why is this not a commandment of sorts? Seems so useful and universally a good idea.
These are just some ideas I had. Maybe there are good reasons they are not in the Bible, or maybe they are, but just seems like they would be useful to me. Thoughts?
This question may seem simple but in truth it relates to every aspect of our lives. If the answer is yes, what defines an organization as evil/sinful? Almost everything in society is owned by 6 corrupt conglomerates. I understand we have to pay taxes to corrupt governments, but should we otherwise try our best to avoid even giving pay to corruption? If so, should our every minute not be devoted to this pursuit? I feel like the answer must be that it isn't inherently sinful simply because the question has so many variables but it is a puzzling one that I can't really think of a good response to.