Jewish perspective on tax season

As we enter the tax season, in advance of the customary April 15 deadline, JNS.org offers reflections by Dr. Erica Brown on taxes from a Jewish perspective.

The Talmudic scholar Rabba said, “Observe that this must be true. For [the government] cuts down trees and builds bridges, and we cross them.” In that statement, Rabba presents the obligation of taxes as ultimately self-serving. If we cross bridges then we must pay for them. Paying taxes is one way we conform to another Talmudic principle, “the laws of the land are [our] laws.”

Unfortunately, there are some who make distinctions between Jewish law and federal/state law and are not careful about filing taxes or flagrantly flaunt the law with no intention to pay if they can get away with it.

“It’s okay to minimize taxes by taking advantage of legitimate provisions of the tax law, or even by taking a reasonable position on an unresolved question of law,” says Rabbi Asher Meir, research director at the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem who studied at Harvard, received a PhD in Economics from MIT and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, and whose Aish.com columns formed the basis of his book titled, Jewish Ethicist. “But we cross the line into tax evasion, which is a criminal act, when there is no sincere claim of lawfulness.”

Throughout our history, special taxes were often placed upon Jews to “protect” them before they were citizens, and there are even studies of the role of the tax collector in Yiddish literature. We have taxes mentioned in several places in the Bible. The digitized March 2013 issue of the journal Sh’ma (accessible online) has an excellent collection of articles on Jews and taxes including a discussion of tax deductions for charitable giving, a much debated feature of American tax exemptions that is not true in many other countries. Charity is pure charity.