Abstract
Paying taxes, as determined by the legislature, is a moral obligation owed by members of a community to their community. Question is whether paying taxes has become an exclusively legal affair: a legal obligation towards the state, replacing a moral obligation towards society. This chapter tries to find an answer to that question by analysing social contract theorists and their critics. Social contract theorists and their critics searched for principles underlying a viable civil polity. Hobbes, Spinoza and Hume focused on political and legal authority and obedience; grounding their theories on various ideas regarding human motivations and human sociability. These different starting points resulted in diverging conceptions of the reciprocal relationships between ruler and subjects and between subjects and fellow subjects. We will show the consequences thereof for the relationship between tax law and morality. Different conceptions of the reciprocal relationships involved may invite behaviour varying from minimalist compliance to a more liberal compliance with tax law. Taxpayers facing absolute sovereignty may adopt a legalistic attitude relying on the letter of the law or exploiting loopholes rather than stay within the spirit of applicable tax legislation.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Jackson (1973), who distinguishes between prudential maxims and moral rules.
- 2.
John Hampden refused to pay the ship-money, a levy for naval support, which “in its fatally controversial form took shape after 1634” (Braddick 2019, 31).
- 3.
As for compliance with tax obligations, this may refer to the following kinds of obligations: (1) registration in the system; (2) timely filing or lodgement of requisite taxation information; (3) reporting of complete and accurate information (incorporating good record keeping); and (4) payment of taxation obligations on time; OECD (2014).
- 4.
Spinoza does not identify the right and power; see Curley (1996), 318–322, also for a useful comparison with Hobbes.
- 5.
Here terms such as passions and emotions, and natural inclinations are sometimes used in lieu of the more technical-philosophical term ‘affects’ because a precise equivalent in our spoken language is lacking. For Spinoza’s affects can be passive and active, but in the TP Spinoza does not apply this distinction consistently.
- 6.
This does not necessarily go harmoniously, conflict between human beings being the inevitable (Lloyd 1996, 75).
- 7.
Kisner calls this the second natural law. Spinoza himself defines ‘benevolence’ in a different way: ‘the desire to benefit those whom we pity (E3, Definitions of the Emotions, no. 35).
- 8.
Cf Fuller’s view of law as a purposive enterprise (Fuller 1977, 145 ff.).
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Gribnau, H., Dijkstra, C. (2020). Social Contract and Beyond: Sociability, Reciprocity and Tax Ethics. In: van Brederode, R. (eds) Ethics and Taxation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-0089-3_3
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