Chapter 2 - The Ethics of Tax Evasion

Summary

The Spanish late scholastics shared with most other Spaniards the conviction that the tax system of the time was morally indefensible. The challenge for the theologians advising tax payers was to generate morally tenable strategies to help them cope with an unbearable tax burden without calling for outright civil disobedience. The vast majority of the moral theologians thought that an acceptable modus vivendi was to argue that one is morally obliged to pay tax only when expressly demanded to do so by the fiscal authorities. The real challenge for the late scholastics was to defend the custom of payment on demand without thereby denying that we have a strong moral obligation to pay the tax. This chapter surveys and evaluates the strategies of Alfonso de Castro, Navarrus (Martín de Azpicueta) and Francisco Suárez to surmount this challenge by focusing on their use of the doctrine of ‘purely penal law’ and their understanding of the relation between custom and law.