The relative value of taxes vs donations underlies a lot of EA thinking and doesnât get discussed much, so Iâm glad you brought this up. I think itâs important how one defines âevading taxesâ. If we grant the argument that âtaxes are not your moneyâ (which is plausible and appeals to me aesthetically), itâs pretty critical to identify the âcorrect amountâ 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 âwhatever I can get away withâ. Or you might say a bunch of the normal loopholes arenât morally legitimate, and that the correct amount is âwhatever your tax bracket saysâ. Or if youâre 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) Jeffâs proposal is sufficient far away from what most people consider âtax evasionâ that it doesnât really run into the problem youâre identifying. But I occasionally see other EA proposals that look closer to âsteal money to buy bed netsâ.
I think there are two orthogonal axes hereâone of property rights and âstealingâ, and one of the comparison between your groupâs 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) Jeffâs suggestion is ok on the first axis, I wanted to highlight that this doesnât 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 concernsâe.g. if youâre a poor person stealing from a store to feed your family. On the other hand, we wouldnât want everyone to do this. In the same way that we canât sustainably help the world if we go live in a tent and donate 95% of our money, we also canât strive to stop paying taxes and redirect all that money to bednetsâwhich 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 itâs important to pay taxes.
This problem is even more relevant in other EA contexts right nowâwhere a lot of the movementâs money comes from the profits of companies in tax havens (the Bahamas). And this (rightfully) doesnât 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 doesnât get discussed much, so Iâm glad you brought this up. I think itâs important how one defines âevading taxesâ. If we grant the argument that âtaxes are not your moneyâ (which is plausible and appeals to me aesthetically), itâs pretty critical to identify the âcorrect amountâ 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 âwhatever I can get away withâ. Or you might say a bunch of the normal loopholes arenât morally legitimate, and that the correct amount is âwhatever your tax bracket saysâ. Or if youâre 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) Jeffâs proposal is sufficient far away from what most people consider âtax evasionâ that it doesnât really run into the problem youâre identifying. But I occasionally see other EA proposals that look closer to âsteal money to buy bed netsâ.
Yeah, I basically agree.
I think there are two orthogonal axes hereâone of property rights and âstealingâ, and one of the comparison between your groupâs 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) Jeffâs suggestion is ok on the first axis, I wanted to highlight that this doesnât 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 concernsâe.g. if youâre a poor person stealing from a store to feed your family. On the other hand, we wouldnât want everyone to do this. In the same way that we canât sustainably help the world if we go live in a tent and donate 95% of our money, we also canât strive to stop paying taxes and redirect all that money to bednetsâwhich 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 itâs important to pay taxes.
This problem is even more relevant in other EA contexts right nowâwhere a lot of the movementâs money comes from the profits of companies in tax havens (the Bahamas). And this (rightfully) doesnât look good to an outsider. [Edit: this was claimed as false about FTX, and I may very plausibly indeed be wrong]