The relative value of taxes vs donations underlies a lot of EA thinking and doesn’t get discussed much, so I’m glad you brought this up. I think it’s important how one defines “evading taxes”. If we grant the argument that “taxes are not your money” (which is plausible and appeals to me aesthetically), it’s pretty critical to identify the “correct amount” of taxes which one owes. I might say the correct amount is whatever the tax authorities say I need to pay, which basically amounts to “whatever I can get away with”. Or you might say a bunch of the normal loopholes aren’t morally legitimate, and that the correct amount is “whatever your tax bracket says”. Or if you’re a tax protester, you might say one or taxes are not morally legitimate, and so the correct amount of taxes you owe is in fact less than the tax authorities say it is.
My point is, establishing how much money I owe in taxes (and therefore how much of my income belongs to the state) is as much a political question as it is a legal or administrative question.
In my opinion (and it seems you agree) Jeff’s proposal is sufficient far away from what most people consider “tax evasion” that it doesn’t really run into the problem you’re identifying. But I occasionally see other EA proposals that look closer to “steal money to buy bed nets”.
I think there are two orthogonal axes here—one of property rights and “stealing”, and one of the comparison between your group’s concerns and your own. And the view that my own concerns are more important on the second axis often comes together with a view about the first one, that says taxes are mine as long as I manage to hold on to them.
But here since (the vast majority of people would agree) Jeff’s suggestion is ok on the first axis, I wanted to highlight that this doesn’t cancel the need to ponder on the second one.
Sometimes even when you do steal, it may end up being fine to prioritise your own concerns—e.g. if you’re a poor person stealing from a store to feed your family. On the other hand, we wouldn’t want everyone to do this. In the same way that we can’t sustainably help the world if we go live in a tent and donate 95% of our money, we also can’t strive to stop paying taxes and redirect all that money to bednets—which would be analogous, but on the level of society rather than the individual. So we need to somehow still drill it into ourselves and our philosophy that it’s important to pay taxes.
This problem is even more relevant in other EA contexts right now—where a lot of the movement’s money comes from the profits of companies in tax havens (the Bahamas). And this (rightfully) doesn’t look good to an outsider. [Edit: this was claimed as false about FTX, and I may very plausibly indeed be wrong]
The relative value of taxes vs donations underlies a lot of EA thinking and doesn’t get discussed much, so I’m glad you brought this up. I think it’s important how one defines “evading taxes”. If we grant the argument that “taxes are not your money” (which is plausible and appeals to me aesthetically), it’s pretty critical to identify the “correct amount” of taxes which one owes. I might say the correct amount is whatever the tax authorities say I need to pay, which basically amounts to “whatever I can get away with”. Or you might say a bunch of the normal loopholes aren’t morally legitimate, and that the correct amount is “whatever your tax bracket says”. Or if you’re a tax protester, you might say one or taxes are not morally legitimate, and so the correct amount of taxes you owe is in fact less than the tax authorities say it is.
My point is, establishing how much money I owe in taxes (and therefore how much of my income belongs to the state) is as much a political question as it is a legal or administrative question.
In my opinion (and it seems you agree) Jeff’s proposal is sufficient far away from what most people consider “tax evasion” that it doesn’t really run into the problem you’re identifying. But I occasionally see other EA proposals that look closer to “steal money to buy bed nets”.
Yeah, I basically agree.
I think there are two orthogonal axes here—one of property rights and “stealing”, and one of the comparison between your group’s concerns and your own. And the view that my own concerns are more important on the second axis often comes together with a view about the first one, that says taxes are mine as long as I manage to hold on to them.
But here since (the vast majority of people would agree) Jeff’s suggestion is ok on the first axis, I wanted to highlight that this doesn’t cancel the need to ponder on the second one.
Sometimes even when you do steal, it may end up being fine to prioritise your own concerns—e.g. if you’re a poor person stealing from a store to feed your family. On the other hand, we wouldn’t want everyone to do this. In the same way that we can’t sustainably help the world if we go live in a tent and donate 95% of our money, we also can’t strive to stop paying taxes and redirect all that money to bednets—which would be analogous, but on the level of society rather than the individual. So we need to somehow still drill it into ourselves and our philosophy that it’s important to pay taxes.
This problem is even more relevant in other EA contexts right now—where a lot of the movement’s money comes from the profits of companies in tax havens (the Bahamas). And this (rightfully) doesn’t look good to an outsider. [Edit: this was claimed as false about FTX, and I may very plausibly indeed be wrong]