The claim that tax avoidance is immoral is an attack on the very notion of private property. It is, as it were, to say that all money belongs to society collectively, and “we” have an intention as to how much you get to use yourself and how much goes to the state, and if you avoid tax you end up using more of society’s collective money than it intended for you to use. Tax avoidance then becomes a kind of theft. But if my property is fundamentally mine, a tax is an impost, a legal requirement for me to surrender some of my property. Provided I do that, I have behaved perfectly properly. If the overall consequence is that I do not pay what would be regarded as a fair tax contribution, either tax law should be modified, or I could be persuaded that I had a moral duty to make an additional free-will tax contribution.
Andrew Lilico, “Companies have a moral duty to pay no more tax than legally required”, The Telegraph, 2013-06-14
June 14, 2013
QotD: Tax avoidance
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