RPF0663-Should_Christians_Participate_in_Tax_Strikes_and_Tax_Protest

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00:00:14.720 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:18.160 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:22.400 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. Yesterday on the show,

00:00:27.520 | I talked to you about why is Joshua so anti-tax. But that show was largely philosophical. I talked

00:00:34.160 | about a little bit of theory, some moral theory, some governmental theory, political theory, etc.

00:00:39.040 | And you're welcome to listen to that show, but it wasn't particularly practical.

00:00:41.600 | I just talked about theory, but we talked about things that really you and I have no chance to

00:00:47.600 | affect. It's just a theoretical discussion that I think is worth thinking about, to ask ourselves

00:00:53.360 | if we're complicit in things that are immoral. But I didn't go into any detail about anything

00:00:58.800 | practical. I thought today, however, it would be interesting to talk about tax protesting and tax

00:01:04.320 | evasion, because I made the comment in yesterday's show that I don't personally support or practice

00:01:10.880 | any kind of tax evasion, the willful, intentional non-payment of taxes that are legally owed.

00:01:17.360 | By way of reminder, there are two words that we use in tax planning. We use the word tax

00:01:22.960 | avoidance, which is simply choosing to arrange your affairs in a way that you avoid a tax that

00:01:28.560 | is due, and tax evasion, which is willfully and intentionally not paying a tax that is legally

00:01:36.160 | owed. So an example would be tax avoidance would be if taxes, if you live on the line of a place

00:01:43.120 | where there are no state income taxes and gas is five cents cheaper, then you can go over the state

00:01:49.120 | line and you fill up your car where the gas is five cents cheaper. You're avoiding the tax, the

00:01:53.280 | high tax in your state. Tax evasion would be doing something like going and using non-taxed off-road

00:01:59.600 | fuel and putting that in your on-road vehicle, which then drive on the vehicle, which is

00:02:04.640 | technically illegal. It's not illegal to cross the state line and buy your things there where the

00:02:08.560 | taxes are lower. It is illegal to use off-highway diesel fuel in your on-highway vehicle. So with

00:02:16.080 | regard to income taxes, tax avoidance simply means choosing to do something like put money into an

00:02:23.840 | IRA to avoid the tax on a certain amount of income. Tax evasion means not telling the IRS about

00:02:30.240 | $5,000 of income that you earned in cash from side work. Now this distinction is important because

00:02:36.800 | when we talk about tax protesting, we have a number of different techniques that you can choose from.

00:02:42.480 | Tax protesting means not paying a tax out of protest for what it is. And this is not a new

00:02:50.160 | subject here on Radical Personal Finance. If we were to go all the way back to, I think, episode 17

00:02:54.560 | in July of 2014, July 10, 2014, I interviewed David Gross, who is the author of the book

00:03:05.280 | 99 Tactics of Successful Tax Resistance Campaigns. And the title of that episode was "Should I Stop

00:03:11.600 | Paying My Taxes on Moral Grounds?" David Gross is a tax protester, specifically a war tax protester,

00:03:18.720 | after the United States' invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan back in after the September 11,

00:03:25.760 | 2001 terrorist attacks, he stopped paying his taxes to protest the war effort. And although,

00:03:31.920 | by my assessment, it seems that the current war tax resistance movement is pretty weak in the

00:03:38.080 | United States, I'm not aware of it being any significant political movement at the moment,

00:03:44.480 | there is a significant history in US American culture of war tax protesters. David writes

00:03:50.240 | extensively about his experiences. I like David. I've read his writing over the years. I think he

00:03:53.760 | does a good job of following these issues. If you're interested, you can read his work at

00:03:57.280 | sniggle.net, s-n-i-g-g-l-e.net. That's his website that he curates on these topics. The challenge is

00:04:05.760 | that war tax protesting or tax protesting in general can be an extra challenge for Christians.

00:04:11.520 | And this show is primarily targeted towards the audience of Radical Personal Finance that

00:04:15.520 | identifies as Christian. You're, of course, welcome to tune in if that's not you. But

00:04:20.560 | tax resistance is very difficult for Christians because, on the one hand, there's an obvious

00:04:27.840 | moral horror at many of the things that are done with tax money. The most obvious example would be

00:04:35.120 | the war machine of the United States and many other governments. The behavior of the US military,

00:04:41.920 | the unjust and immoral wars that are constantly prosecuted by the US military, bringing death to

00:04:48.640 | millions of people all around the world, are obviously immoral, obviously completely antithetical

00:04:54.960 | to the teachings of Jesus. And so for Christians who try to look at this and say, "How do I

00:05:02.000 | reconcile the fact that my tax dollars are going to support this military empire?" It can be very,

00:05:08.000 | very difficult because you look at the behavior of the military empire and it turns your stomach.

00:05:13.600 | And you don't want to be complicit. You don't want to have your money involved in it.

00:05:18.320 | But the challenge is there are a number of very clear teachings in Christianity by the major

00:05:26.480 | prophets and founders of the faith that very clearly teach submission to government authority

00:05:35.360 | and the payment of taxes. And if you look at the environments and the governments that these men

00:05:42.000 | were dealing with, it's hard to say that they had it tougher than we do. You can begin with

00:05:47.360 | Jesus Christ himself, who was executed without cause, without any kind of justice, was executed

00:05:54.000 | by the government of his day. And yet Jesus taught very clearly to pay taxes. "Give to Caesar what is

00:05:59.840 | Caesar's and give to God what is God's." Paul also very clearly taught to pay taxes. Paul also

00:06:07.520 | executed completely without cause by the Roman Empire. Peter, "Honor the emperor, give to all,

00:06:17.120 | honor the emperor." In 1 Peter 2, "Honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor."

00:06:22.880 | And yet Peter also executed by the government of his day. Now, I don't know how you get much

00:06:30.080 | clearer than dealing with men who were executed by the government of their day when they did

00:06:36.320 | nothing wrong. They did nothing other than preach a gospel message, preaching the gospel of Jesus

00:06:42.000 | Christ. Christ, of course, preaching his own gospel. Paul and Peter preaching the gospel of

00:06:45.840 | Jesus Christ. They went about doing good, delivering people from demons, healing hundreds

00:06:53.280 | or thousands of people. We don't know exactly, but at least thousands of people collectively.

00:06:57.760 | And did nothing good. All of the accusations that were brought against them were trumped-up

00:07:04.000 | charges. We have record of the trials of Christ and of Paul, and all of the accusations were

00:07:11.120 | false charges. They were lies that were brought against them in court. We don't know, we don't

00:07:17.360 | have the record of Paul's final trial, but we have the record of several of his trials before

00:07:21.440 | Festus and Felix, I think, before he ultimately went to Caesar. We have record of his defense

00:07:28.000 | before King Agrippa in Jerusalem. So, when you look at the, and study what these men were facing,

00:07:36.000 | they certainly had a lot to be upset about with the government of their day. We don't have,

00:07:41.680 | of course, the record of Peter's trial, but we do know that he was executed by the government.

00:07:46.320 | So, it seems a little bit difficult for those of us in the modern era who are frustrated with

00:07:55.680 | the immoral behavior of our governments to turn and appeal to the Bible as a defense and say,

00:08:01.440 | "Well, things were better back then." They just don't know what we're talking about. No,

00:08:06.160 | it's the exact opposite. You know, in those days you had Christians being doused in oil

00:08:11.680 | and used as human candle in candles in Nero's garden. It's hard to say that they didn't,

00:08:16.560 | they had it, you know, easier than we do. We have such an easy, cushy life that it's not

00:08:21.360 | even worth comparison. It's not even worth the comparison. So, but yet still you have this

00:08:28.800 | challenge, and I think a new challenge, especially a challenge that certainly Christians in half a

00:08:35.040 | dozen states at least are facing is, "How can I be complicit and involved in the abortion of

00:08:40.240 | children?" In general, your involvement of your tax dollars in the military empire of the United

00:08:46.960 | States is the same no matter what state you live in, or even if you live outside the country. If

00:08:50.720 | you're a citizen of the United States, your money is involved in that. But then, of course,

00:08:54.000 | there's an increasing usage of tax monies to fund abortion. I find that issue particularly difficult,

00:09:00.400 | particularly challenging. There are a number of Christian tax protesters who are not paying taxes

00:09:06.640 | because of the state's involvement in abortion. And there's a very real chance that in the coming

00:09:12.000 | years there may be, if a Democratic president wins the presidency in the previous election,

00:09:17.200 | all of the Democrats, both, in that case it was Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,

00:09:22.240 | pledged to repeal the Hyde Amendment. I haven't seen or noticed any public statements by this

00:09:26.880 | raft of Democratic candidates, but I would assume that in time they would make that pledge publicly

00:09:31.760 | as well. And so it can be, it may be very difficult. We may be in a situation a couple

00:09:37.280 | of years from now, if there is a change in the political party, where we face some difficult

00:09:43.120 | choices. And so I thought it'd be useful to talk about tax protesting, both big picture and then

00:09:49.200 | a little bit theologically, to give you an idea and get you thinking about the topic. Now, the

00:09:55.040 | first thing I want to point out is that there are different ways and models of tax protesting.

00:10:00.880 | Oftentimes people assume that tax protesting means that I simply, I owe the IRS $15,000 and I don't

00:10:10.080 | pay it, right? And many people rightly have trouble with that. But in studying the issue over the

00:10:16.560 | years, I came to the conclusion there are a number of different ways that you could engage in tax

00:10:20.320 | protesting. I'll use David Gross as an example. David Gross practices two different methods of

00:10:26.720 | tax protesting. The first thing that he does is he keeps his earned income below a level of taxation

00:10:34.240 | for his federal income taxes. When he decided to become a tax protester, that was the first

00:10:40.960 | strategy that he chose to employ. Now, in the United States, based upon the way the tax code

00:10:46.320 | works, you can use the provisions of the tax code. And as long as your earned income is below

00:10:53.600 | the level of federal taxation, you can avoid owing any income tax. So David Gross is self-employed,

00:11:06.000 | he runs a business. And so of course, in a business you have your gross income. Let's

00:11:10.000 | say that you earn $50,000 of gross income. Funny, gross income, David Gross. You have $50,000 of

00:11:17.280 | gross income. Then you additionally have some level of business expenses. Let's say that you

00:11:24.400 | have $10,000 of business expenses that are associated with that. So now you have $40,000

00:11:29.680 | of net income. Then of course, you could do something like make a $10,000 401(k) contribution,

00:11:35.840 | which would then drop your income from $40,000 to $30,000 of income. And then for a single

00:11:42.480 | taxpayer in the United States, I don't remember exactly what the numbers are for this year,

00:11:45.520 | David does a good job of calculating it each year. But if you have $30,000 of annual income,

00:11:50.080 | then you're not going to owe any federal income taxes on that, waste upon the personal allowances

00:11:55.280 | and exemptions, et cetera. And so you could, in that situation, you could effectively earn

00:12:01.360 | $40,000 of net profit from your business and not pay any income taxes legally using those means.

00:12:08.320 | You haven't broken any law. You haven't run the risk of going to prison. You haven't done anything

00:12:14.160 | except use the law that exists, but yet lower your earned income. That type of strategy is the type

00:12:21.520 | of strategy I think is usually the first place, especially that Christians would go. Because as

00:12:26.320 | you're seeking to balance honoring the emperor and being a good citizen of the king, while also

00:12:32.560 | registering your protest, you want to be careful about breaking the law. It's hard for Christians

00:12:37.440 | to be openly defiant and say, "I'm going to break the law." And so that's one thing that you could

00:12:45.120 | consider. And I think that a lot of what we talk about on Radical Personal Finance really could

00:12:49.520 | fit into those kinds of strategies. For example, if I wanted to become a tax protester, but I

00:12:56.080 | wanted to live in the United States, I could avoid most federal income taxes through putting these

00:13:02.480 | methods together. If you understand business taxes, if you are self-employed, if you understand the

00:13:07.680 | proper legal documented business expense deductions, if you understand how to live frugally,

00:13:15.200 | you're not going to be riding around in your private airplane, but you could live frugally,

00:13:19.760 | if you understand the various tax exemptions and the activities that are not tax intensive.

00:13:27.920 | For example, maybe you build your own house. That gives you a distinct monetary value,

00:13:33.760 | but you wind up at the end of it with a debt-free house that you build yourself,

00:13:37.840 | and you can maintain a lower income but still have a high standard of living.

00:13:41.120 | You garden. Well, the government doesn't tax the food that you harvest from your garden. They don't

00:13:46.080 | tax the rabbits that you raise in your backyard, so you can feed your family while needing a lower

00:13:50.480 | level of income. As long as you keep your income below the level of taxation, you could, in effect,

00:13:57.040 | pay no federal income taxes using that particular process. If you have children, you get some tax

00:14:04.960 | credits for those children, and so you have a slightly more generous ability to earn income,

00:14:09.280 | and you could always just adjust your income and just simply choose not to work. You could take

00:14:12.800 | your time, and instead of using your time to be engaged in paid activities, you could take your

00:14:18.720 | time and you could invest it into activities that you're not paid for. There are many productive

00:14:24.000 | ways for you to use your time and energy and not be paid, and yet still have an impact, still be

00:14:30.800 | busy, and still be productive while not paying federal income taxes. You can do that following

00:14:35.520 | the law. Well, that's a perfectly reasonable and acceptable form of tax protesting.

00:14:40.400 | Now, David Gross's story is interesting. He went through a phase. He did that for a number of years,

00:14:47.360 | and then he ultimately decided to stop paying his self-employment taxes.

00:14:51.040 | And this is the other wrinkle, because the challenge is that because of the multifold nature

00:14:56.960 | of the US tax system, you're going to have multiple taxes that you have to deal with.

00:15:02.240 | You have to deal with your federal income taxes. That's one set of tax planning. But then you have

00:15:07.040 | to deal with your employment taxes or your self-employment taxes. The employment taxes are

00:15:12.400 | the 15.3% that you pay of your income as a self-employed person that goes to fund Medicare,

00:15:18.960 | Medicaid, and Social Security. And then, or if you're an employee, it's the 7.65% of your income

00:15:25.200 | that you contribute from your paycheck and the 7.65% of your income that your employer contributes

00:15:30.240 | towards your Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. And this again brings in another

00:15:34.000 | interesting ethical dilemma. If you're protesting war taxes, you can make a decent argument that,

00:15:38.800 | "Hey, I'm not funding the war effort when I'm funding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid."

00:15:45.440 | But if you have a different point of protest, for example, let's assume that you were protesting

00:15:50.080 | the use of Medicaid funds to provide for abortion. Well, now all of a sudden,

00:15:54.960 | your employment taxes are a lot more tricky. Well, David Gross, after a number of years of

00:16:01.120 | doing things with simply lowering his income, he went on and stopped paying his self-employment

00:16:05.520 | taxes. So he went all the way. And so his is a combination of tax protesting methodologies.

00:16:11.120 | Part of his practice is to not pay federal income taxes simply because he doesn't owe them,

00:16:16.720 | but then he doesn't pay his self-employment taxes, although technically the government

00:16:20.560 | says that he owes those taxes. And that's where we cross the line. You cross into different

00:16:25.920 | strategies. Am I going to practice those techniques that are considered to be illegal,

00:16:32.480 | that I could be prosecuted, I could be sued for, or am I going to stay with techniques that are

00:16:37.360 | legal? Now, I don't know that there's a right answer on these things. It's a matter of conscience,

00:16:43.280 | and it is a difficult question because there seem to be things that are pooling in multiple ways.

00:16:54.080 | First thing I guess is I would say you could, there's a decent strength to the argument that

00:16:59.360 | it's not your fault. For example, taxes are not optional. When you live somewhere,

00:17:07.280 | and when the government that has jurisdiction over where you live tells you you have to do this,

00:17:12.880 | you can make a very clear and strong and compelling argument that this is not optional.

00:17:19.120 | This money is being stolen from me. And if it's being used to do things that I think are immoral,

00:17:24.080 | it's being used to fund a military empire, it's being used to murder babies, it's being used for

00:17:28.720 | medical practices that I think are immoral. Canadian Christians face far more challenges

00:17:34.000 | with this than US Christians. Many European Christians face bigger challenges with

00:17:37.520 | the medical practices that are practiced and paid for by the national healthcare systems.

00:17:45.520 | But you could say, "Listen, the money was taken from me, and so I don't have moral responsibility

00:17:50.240 | for that. It was taken from me without my vote." So the analogy that I would compare this to would

00:17:56.480 | be to simply say, "Let's assume that you have a car, and the car is sitting in your driveway,

00:18:02.400 | but then one night a thief comes and takes the car, and then they use the car in a terrorist

00:18:07.200 | attack to mow over a bunch of people at the green market on Saturday morning in your town,

00:18:11.200 | and they kill a bunch of people using your car. Well, you're not morally complicit in the murder

00:18:18.080 | of those people by the terrorist because they stole your car. It's your car. You didn't do

00:18:22.560 | anything wrong. Your car was locked. It was protected. It was in your driveway. The guy

00:18:25.680 | stole your car, and he used that car to murder a bunch of people." So morally, you could reason

00:18:30.240 | and say, "I'm also no longer complicit in the murder of people with the government's war

00:18:36.880 | machine. The money was taken from me. It was stolen from me without my ability to resist.

00:18:42.160 | It was taken. If I resisted, they'd put me in prison and take it anyway. Take my stuff."

00:18:46.400 | So it was taken from me without the ability to resist. The money was then used to fund this

00:18:51.280 | airplane that's dropping bombs on these people, and it was used to blow up a wedding,

00:18:56.800 | and now there's 10 people dead here in the compound, and my money funded it, but it wasn't

00:19:05.280 | my choice. I'm not morally complicit. I think that's a strong argument. I do. But for a lot

00:19:10.560 | of people, it doesn't feel quite right because just because you're not morally complicit doesn't

00:19:15.840 | mean that you're not actively fighting against something. And you look at the great atrocities

00:19:20.400 | that are committed over the years, and you think, "Shouldn't somebody have actively fought

00:19:25.360 | against this?" I recently read an interesting book called Unbroken, a World War II story of—was

00:19:34.720 | Unbroken, a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption. The author is Laura

00:19:39.920 | Hillebrand, and she wrote this book about the life primarily of a man named Louis Zamparini,

00:19:46.640 | who, among other things, was an American aviator who was shot down in the South Pacific during

00:19:55.360 | World War II and eventually became a prisoner of war in the Japanese prisoner of war camps.

00:20:02.400 | And what's interesting is for those of—in general, those of us who are exposed to a general

00:20:06.720 | study of history, we don't really know much about the Pacific theater of operations during World

00:20:12.880 | War II. Because of the European—the importance of the European theater with D-Day and the

00:20:17.840 | concentration camps and Hitler, we're super focused on that history. And so we tend to go

00:20:22.480 | to concentration camps of Jews rather than thinking about the Japanese. But this book—and I would

00:20:27.920 | strongly recommend it to you, I really enjoyed it—but this book profiles and discusses, among

00:20:32.480 | other things, what happened in the Japanese prisoner of war camps. And it was interesting

00:20:37.360 | because it was, of course, just untold cruelty by the Japanese soldiers who were in charge of

00:20:45.360 | the prisoner of war camps. And yet there were people who were in those prisoner of war camps,

00:20:49.760 | and perhaps around, who were trying to help the prisoners in some way. There were a few people

00:20:53.680 | who were kind. And I've often thought, what if I had been Japanese and I had been living there?

00:20:58.720 | Would I have had the moral courage to stand up for the proper treatment of people? And of course,

00:21:05.280 | you'd think, well, probably not. You know, they didn't, and there was a reason they didn't,

00:21:10.240 | so I probably wouldn't have either. Like, I'm not special, I'm no different than anybody else.

00:21:14.800 | I probably would have gone along to get along just like just about anybody does.

00:21:17.520 | So then you look at your own day and you bring it back and you say,

00:21:21.680 | but the fact that they didn't stand up when people were being tortured, when people were

00:21:28.080 | being abused, the fact that they didn't stand up is a stain on the Japanese culture of that day.

00:21:34.400 | And yet, is there something that I should be standing up for right now that'll be a stain on,

00:21:41.280 | say, the American culture when it's reflected back on in 50 years? And, you know, the obvious

00:21:47.360 | examples are the American military occupations of other places and the untold hundreds of thousands

00:21:53.920 | of people, innocent civilians who've been killed in the various wars that the US government

00:21:58.560 | prosecutes, and the murder of hundreds of 60 million people in the United States with abortion.

00:22:04.320 | And you think, how am I going to reflect back on this 40 years from now and say about what I've

00:22:09.520 | done today? Am I going to say, well, my money was taken from me and there was nothing I could do

00:22:13.600 | about it? Or is there something that I can do about it? And that's where you get into the,

00:22:17.120 | one of the strategies some people would go to would be tax protesting. And you say, well,

00:22:22.080 | I should actively do something active. So yes, the money's taken from me, but at least this would be

00:22:27.360 | one thing that I could actively do to try to starve the beast a little bit. And it seems,

00:22:31.360 | there seems like that's a good argument, seems compelling.

00:22:34.080 | Now, let me just lay out for you briefly your options, because I thought a lot about this

00:22:41.200 | a number of years ago. And what's particularly difficult is when you look at the way that tax

00:22:48.400 | protesters are generally treated if they don't win, right? Because if you win, the victors write

00:22:54.240 | the history books and everything is fine. But if you don't win and you look at the way that

00:22:57.680 | protesters are treated, it's pretty tough. And one of the things that certainly has changed for me,

00:23:03.040 | they say that people who fight wars are young men with no families and old men, right? Who don't

00:23:08.480 | have anything to lose. But I'm in the stage where it's the least, I'm the least likely candidate to

00:23:15.920 | be an activist or a protester, etc. Simply because of my family responsibilities. And you think,

00:23:22.000 | I'm not going to get involved in that, they'll lock me up. You look at the people who have been

00:23:25.920 | locked up over the years and who made well-meaning, I think, very sound arguments on many things,

00:23:33.360 | but yet doesn't matter. The person, the government has all the guns, wins. And if they have the guns

00:23:39.040 | and they have the general support of the population, they win. I always think of Erwin Schiff,

00:23:43.680 | locked up, died in prison. He made, I thought, pretty decent arguments, but it doesn't matter.

00:23:49.840 | It doesn't matter how decent your arguments are, you still wind up locked up and dead in prison.

00:23:54.320 | And so when you have young children, you think, "What good do I do? Anybody locked up in prison."

00:23:58.880 | Puts things into perspective and you say, "It doesn't seem like a particularly good strategy."

00:24:03.600 | So I thought a lot about it and I thought, "What are the options?" And so I'll just lay them out

00:24:07.680 | for you and then we'll talk a little bit about the theology of tax protesting. So far as I see it,

00:24:12.800 | you have two basic techniques or you have two basic choices first. The first choice is,

00:24:17.520 | do you want to stay in the legal jurisdiction of the taxing government or do you want to leave

00:24:23.920 | the legal jurisdiction of the taxing government? Because the reality is you always have a choice

00:24:30.240 | to stay or to leave. And for much of my life, I never thought you had a choice. And then one day

00:24:36.160 | I was thinking about it and I realized, no, you do have a choice. And a peaceful solution that

00:24:41.680 | almost anybody has available to them, if you're involved in something that could be a potential

00:24:45.600 | conflict, is to peacefully leave. And I think the strategy and the practice of leaving,

00:24:50.880 | of withdrawing your support, is one of the most effective strategies that in time can lead to

00:24:58.160 | change of an organization. So if you're part of a company that is not engaging in what you consider

00:25:07.040 | to be moral and ethical behavior or business practices, you can leave and that company will

00:25:13.360 | not have your services. Now you can try to change things from the inside first, and I think in

00:25:17.840 | general we probably have some responsibility to do that, or at least it's a good thing to do that,

00:25:22.240 | it demonstrates your care for other people. And so you might choose to become an advocate for

00:25:27.440 | something, try to be an outspoken person inside, and it might be that you can make some change

00:25:31.600 | from the inside, but ultimately if you judge that no change is going to happen, you can leave,

00:25:35.920 | you can leave that company. Similar thing, let's say you're involved in an organization and the

00:25:40.720 | organization is not doing something, or you're involved in church and the church is not doing

00:25:44.880 | what you believe is right to do. Well, your best option, often, I think especially in a church,

00:25:50.800 | you owe a duty of opening your mouth and seeking to correct the thing that is wrong,

00:25:55.840 | but you can just simply leave. And leaving is particularly powerful. First, leaving is obvious.

00:26:01.840 | Leaving shows that you're serious, you put your actions where your mouth were.

00:26:05.840 | Your loss of your presence will be very clear. Your contributions will be gone, your money will

00:26:13.520 | be gone, your skills are gone, your talent's gone, your promotion is gone, and that makes a statement.

00:26:19.520 | Now, you can never be sure that your particular statement will be the one that is heard,

00:26:24.400 | but it certainly does make a statement. And if other people don't come in and replace you in time,

00:26:29.760 | the leaving strategy is entirely peaceful, and yet it makes a difference. You can see companies that

00:26:36.160 | are hollowed out by employees leaving. You can see churches that are hollowed out by people simply

00:26:41.520 | leaving. You look and study the religious atmosphere. I follow it closely in the United

00:26:45.920 | States of different denominations, et cetera. And you can just see how the mainline liberal

00:26:50.560 | Protestant denominations just utterly hollowed out. You can see so many of the Catholic,

00:26:57.360 | what's it called, seminaries, totally hollowed out. The priests aren't coming. And that leaving

00:27:04.080 | has an effect. It leaves certain things. Now, you're not systematically destroying something,

00:27:10.800 | it's just leaving. And so you always have this choice, of course, with government, or you usually

00:27:15.840 | have this choice, again, with government, where you can just simply leave. You can leave the

00:27:20.560 | government or you can stay. Now, if you're going to stay and you don't want to pay taxes, you have,

00:27:26.080 | as I consider it, two basic options. You can use techniques that are so-called legal,

00:27:31.040 | use legal techniques to reduce or eliminate your tax bill, or you can conscientiously choose not

00:27:39.120 | to pay, even though you legally owe the tax. So legal techniques that you could use to reduce

00:27:46.480 | and eliminate your tax bill. First thing that you could do is you could use legal deductions

00:27:50.320 | and credits to lower your taxable income below the tax base. That is one practical, useful strategy.

00:27:57.520 | Use the legal deductions and credits that are part and parcel staples of good financial planning,

00:28:02.320 | good tax planning, to lower your taxable income below the tax base. You can use legal investment

00:28:07.760 | techniques to lower your taxable income below the tax base. So you can just use investment

00:28:11.680 | techniques. There are many available. I've talked about a number of ways that you can generate tax

00:28:15.440 | free income. You can do tax free investing. It can range from the simple, you buy muni bonds

00:28:20.720 | instead of taxable stocks. You buy real estate and you make sure that you have the appropriate

00:28:26.800 | strategy in place to never pay taxes on your real estate. And it'd be very possible to do.

00:28:31.280 | Or you can work less and/or earn less income to lower your taxable income below the tax base.

00:28:37.440 | So you can, instead of investing your time into activities that generate $150,000 of net income,

00:28:44.160 | you can invest your time into activities that generate $40,000 of net income and then invest

00:28:49.040 | the rest of your time into things that are productive but simply don't generate income.

00:28:53.280 | So those are your legal techniques to reduce or eliminate your tax bill. And I think here,

00:28:58.720 | everything that we talk about in radical personal finance lines up with those. Again,

00:29:06.800 | practice techniques with frugality, even extreme frugality. One of the things that,

00:29:12.160 | as I've profiled and talked about different kind of extreme frugalists, Charles Long,

00:29:16.640 | Jacob Lund Fisker, Amy Decision, and I studied their works and their commentary. What you find

00:29:22.240 | is that if you are committed to extreme frugality, it has the side benefit of allowing you to live

00:29:28.800 | a really great life without a lot of cost, which means you don't need much income. And it's very,

00:29:35.440 | very tax efficient. Interestingly, it can also actually be very profitable because

00:29:41.280 | if we go in the direction where welfare programs go, if you participate in those, which

00:29:45.840 | is its own moral quandary, do I participate or not? But if you do participate in those things,

00:29:52.080 | you wind up lowering your income is one of the best things. I shelved the show, I decided not

00:29:58.000 | to do it, but I did a whole analysis of how to live well and yet using all the government programs.

00:30:04.880 | By somebody who is intelligent, but just simply knew how to work the numbers and chose not to

00:30:08.800 | invest their time into productive remunerated activities, but just simply to be a leech and

00:30:14.720 | live off the dole. I think it's bad for the character, which I don't really wish to popularize

00:30:19.120 | it, but you could study it and you could do the same thing. So those are legal techniques that

00:30:23.600 | you can use to reduce or eliminate your tax bill. The challenge there is some taxes are easier to do

00:30:29.840 | that with another. So federal income taxes is straightforward. Self-employment taxes or employment

00:30:34.080 | taxes is much more difficult. Now there are a few ways that you could do that, ways that you could

00:30:39.280 | legally eliminate self-employment taxes, but it's much more challenging. Then the second thing that

00:30:44.560 | you could do is you could conscientiously choose not to pay even though you legally owe. And there

00:30:50.800 | are different ways that this is done. So some people choose not to send a representative portion

00:30:55.600 | of their tax to the government. So they calculate their taxes and they say this percentage of my,

00:31:00.480 | I have a $10,000 tax bill, this percentage here, this thousand dollars is what would ordinarily

00:31:06.640 | fund the war machine. So as a point of protest, I'm not going to send you this thousand dollars.

00:31:13.200 | I'm going to send you $9,000 and instead I'm either keeping the thousand dollars or I'm making

00:31:18.880 | a thousand dollar donation to an anti-war charity to try to counteract the military empire that

00:31:25.200 | you've established. That would be one strategy where you choose not to send a representative

00:31:29.920 | portion of your tax to the government. The second example would be you choose not to send any of

00:31:34.800 | your tax to the government and instead you keep it or you give it to a charity that actively

00:31:40.560 | counteracts the actions you oppose. Again, you owe $10,000, you say I'm not sending it to you,

00:31:46.320 | but I'm going to give it to my local church or I'm going to send it to a church that's in Iraq

00:31:52.000 | that needs money, that needs support, who's trying to minister to the people that you're bombing

00:31:56.400 | and we're going to send it there instead and things like that. But all of those things keep

00:32:01.600 | you in the legal jurisdiction of the taxing government. Or the second option is that you

00:32:06.560 | could leave the legal jurisdiction of the taxing government and then again by leaving using

00:32:12.560 | techniques discussed on this show, you can either legally reduce or eliminate the taxes that you owe.

00:32:18.640 | When I talked about for US taxpayers, if I talked about moving abroad, you can use those techniques

00:32:26.080 | using the foreign earned income exclusion to eliminate the federal income tax on your first

00:32:33.440 | $105,000-ish of income. So now if you're going to be a tax protester, it becomes a little bit

00:32:39.360 | simpler for you to figure out how to earn a little bit more money so you're not left destitute earning

00:32:44.400 | $30,000 in the United States to follow the law. But by living outside of the United States,

00:32:50.240 | you avoid the income tax on your $105,000. It also clears up, if you work for a foreign corporation,

00:32:56.160 | it clears up the problem of owing those self-employment taxes. And so you can effectively

00:33:01.840 | live tax-free with regard to the United States. Maybe you move to a country where their government

00:33:06.880 | is not involved in some of the actions that you think are wrong or you move to a tax haven and

00:33:13.040 | you don't owe taxes to the tax haven or you live on a sailboat or whatever you do. You become a

00:33:17.520 | PT or however you handle it. But it's very doable for you to practice those techniques. Very, very

00:33:25.840 | doable. And so that may be one way that you can follow the law. And I've always found that some

00:33:31.200 | of those things are, at least I've found for me, that it solves, at least having that as an option,

00:33:37.200 | solves some of my moral consternation over those questions. Because in that way,

00:33:43.840 | you can engage in an effective form of tax protesting by not paying the taxes,

00:33:49.360 | but by not breaking the law, you can also satisfy your conscience of not breaking the law. And that

00:33:55.840 | to me is important. So I consider that. That's just an overview of tax protesting. It's not a

00:34:03.440 | particularly popular subject. Most people don't think about it. Most people don't care. Most

00:34:07.200 | people don't seem to even reason about the stuff. But there are some. And I really respect, I have

00:34:13.520 | a lot of respect for tax protesters. There are tax protesters from many traditions. There are

00:34:19.200 | some religious tax protesters, there are some that are not. David Gross is not a Christian,

00:34:23.840 | he's not religious at all. But you really appreciate, I really appreciate somebody who

00:34:29.920 | is willing to stand for their convictions. You really appreciate that. And so I admire people

00:34:38.240 | who feel that conviction. But as far as I can see, it's a matter of dealing straight with the

00:34:45.040 | scripture, and then also dealing straight with the scripture and dealing straight with your

00:34:52.800 | conscience. As far as I can see, there's a wide degree of individual saying of conscience. And

00:34:59.360 | then there's also a significant measure of wisdom being needed. Again, I think it's wisdom to stay

00:35:05.760 | out of prison. So you consider it. Now to the theology of tax strikes. I'm simply going here

00:35:12.720 | to read you an article that was published almost three decades ago, back in 1981, in the publication

00:35:18.960 | Biblical Economics Today. And the author of this publication was a popular author on these topics

00:35:26.160 | named James Jordan. And he wrote this article called "The Christian and Tax Strikes, Pros and

00:35:32.640 | Cons." And I've read other things on this, but I thought this was a fairly fair discussion and

00:35:40.160 | raised good points. So if you're a Christian and you've ever thought about tax strikes,

00:35:43.840 | again, to my experience, in general, my answer is, for me, is in general, Christians shouldn't

00:35:49.920 | participate in tax strikes. But I think there can be circumstances. And you study church history,

00:35:56.080 | and there are circumstances many times where you find a group of people that really wrestled with

00:36:01.040 | it and came to the conclusion, "No, we cannot, we can't do this." And they tried to find solutions

00:36:06.240 | to that. And so my personal opinion is that, in general, don't participate in a tax strike.

00:36:13.200 | It's unwise, and I'll read these discussions and arguments to you in a moment. But there

00:36:17.760 | might be exceptions. And so it's not one of those very clear, all the way things.

00:36:24.240 | So here's the article called "The Christian and Tax Strikes, Pros and Cons." The purpose of this

00:36:29.760 | essay is not to settle once and for all the matter to which it is addressed, but rather, hopefully,

00:36:35.840 | to set out some principles which will help the reader as he or she comes to grips with the tax

00:36:40.480 | rebellion of the 1980s. The basic thrust of the essay is this. The Bible clearly teaches that

00:36:46.480 | Christians are to submit to the powers that be and pay whatever taxes are required of them.

00:36:51.680 | But citizens of the United States of America, including Christians, may properly raise the

00:36:56.560 | question of just precisely what is required of them, and in raising this question may work for

00:37:02.000 | reform. That is to say, Christians are required to work within the system, as it were, even as

00:37:07.440 | they try to change the system itself. The bulk of this essay is devoted to reasons against engaging

00:37:13.520 | in tax strikes. By making the strongest possible case against tax rebellion, we will be unable to

00:37:19.440 | see clearly on what precise grounds we might possibly join the tax revolt. As the central

00:37:25.520 | government of the United States becomes more and more oppressive and evil, and as it takes more and

00:37:29.760 | more money from its citizens and uses that money to promote greater and greater evils, it is natural

00:37:35.840 | that the Christian conscience should rebel and should consider refusing to pay taxes.

00:37:40.000 | The present civil government of the United States takes far more from its citizens in taxes than the

00:37:45.280 | blueprint for Christian society found in scripture allows it, and the present lords and bosses of

00:37:50.000 | America use that money to finance gross evils such as abortion and military aggression. Thus,

00:37:55.680 | it would seem at first glance that Christians should refuse to pay their taxes, both as a

00:38:00.160 | witness against these evils and as a means of avoiding complicity in their guilt. There are,

00:38:05.200 | however, strong scriptural considerations which lead to the opposite conclusion. The following

00:38:10.160 | lines of argument need to be taken seriously by anyone considering a refusal to pay taxes.

00:38:16.000 | 1. Tax strikes as a kingdom method are contrary to the teaching of Jesus.

00:38:20.400 | In Matthew 22, verses 15-22, the Pharisees sought to entrap Jesus by asking him if it was lawful to

00:38:28.560 | give the pole tax to Caesar. Jesus rebuked their hypocrisy and declared to them that since Caesar's

00:38:34.640 | likeness and inscription were on the coins, they were to "render to Caesar the things that are

00:38:39.840 | Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." In context, that which is "rendered" is money,

00:38:46.160 | so the meaning is this, "pay your taxes to the state and your tithes to the Lord." Caesar's coin

00:38:51.680 | had on it an inscription which claimed that Caesar was divine. Jesus says that Caesar is due the tax,

00:38:57.840 | but not any divine honors. The issue is not to be fought over money, but over worship.

00:39:04.880 | What this passage teaches is that although God's claim and God's law cover all of life,

00:39:10.880 | yet the proper point at which the kingdom of God is to be argued is the question of

00:39:14.480 | worship. It was wrong for Pharaoh to hold Israel in slavery in Egypt. Pharaoh was violating all

00:39:20.480 | kinds of divine laws by his action. All the same, when God challenged Pharaoh, he did not challenge

00:39:25.520 | him at the point of slavery or of oppressive taxation, but at the point of worship. (Exodus

00:39:31.600 | 3.18 and following) Pharaoh was smart enough to know that if he granted Israel the right to worship

00:39:36.800 | their God and granted the legitimacy of that worship, then he could no longer claim to be a

00:39:41.200 | God himself. Pharaoh knew that all the cultural aspects of life are dependent on the fundamental

00:39:46.880 | question of "who is God?" Thus, Israel's liberation from Egypt was not fundamentally a political

00:39:54.480 | liberation. It was not gained by a work strike or a tax strike. True, lower taxes, righteous

00:40:00.880 | government, and Sabbath rest were the result of the deliverance, but they were not the means.

00:40:05.840 | The issue was the gospel. Both the tax strike and liberation theology obscure this fact.

00:40:11.760 | In Matthew 17, verses 24-27, it is not the Roman poll tax which is in view, but a temple tax which

00:40:19.600 | grew up during the intertestamental era, a variant of the Mosaic head tax in Exodus 30.

00:40:25.120 | Jesus' teachings at this point is critical. He tells us that God's imposition of the head tax

00:40:30.320 | in the Old Covenant was a sign that the people were not fully sons of the kingdom,

00:40:34.880 | but in a sense were still strangers. "Sons of the household do not pay taxes," says Jesus.

00:40:40.320 | Paul makes the same point in Galatians 4. In comparison to the privileges of the New Covenant,

00:40:43.920 | the members of the Old Covenant only experienced a kind of slavery. Of course, in comparison to

00:40:48.400 | the pagan world around them, ancient Israel was a nation of free men, sons of God. Having said that

00:40:54.320 | the sons of the kingdom do not pay taxes, Jesus goes on to say that they should be paid "to avoid

00:40:59.920 | giving offense." The tax money is provided in a miraculous manner which teaches us that all money

00:41:06.240 | is God's and we do not need to worry about coming up with more if we pay taxes to avoid giving

00:41:11.440 | offense. This passage constitutes a pledge to the sons of the kingdom that God will provide them the

00:41:17.200 | money to pay their taxes. Because the Christian is freed from bondage to money, he can pay taxes

00:41:22.720 | without worry. 2. Tax strikes as a kingdom method are contrary to the teaching of Paul.

00:41:30.240 | For some well-intentioned Christians, Matthew 17 and 22 are not proof that tax strikes are

00:41:35.600 | unbiblical. They argue that all these passages pertain to are poll taxes, which is a far cry

00:41:42.000 | from the modern oppressive graduated income taxation. In Romans chapter 13 verse 7, however,

00:41:47.440 | we are told to pay to all "what is due them, tax to whom taxes due, custom to whom custom,

00:41:54.240 | fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor." This far more general command more clearly covers

00:42:01.520 | the modern tax situation. The general teaching of Romans chapter 13 verses 1 through 7 is unclear to

00:42:08.800 | many people and bears directly on our subject. In Romans chapter 12 verse 19, God commands us

00:42:14.720 | never to take our own personal revenge. But in Romans chapter 13 verse 4, God tells us that he

00:42:20.000 | has established the civil magistrate as his minister of vengeance. These two verses establish

00:42:25.760 | the important distinction between personal ethics and civil ethics. There are some things that it is

00:42:31.760 | right and proper for a civil magistrate to do, such as executing murderers, which are not at

00:42:37.120 | all proper for private persons to do, such as killing for revenge. In Romans chapter 13 verses

00:42:42.880 | 1 and 2, Paul addresses private persons and tells them that it is their responsibility to submit to

00:42:48.720 | the powers that be. Even the worst rulers, Caesar, Staller, Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Bokassa,

00:42:56.320 | are ordained by God and we are commanded to submit to them in the fear of God.

00:43:00.000 | Those who resist rulers, we are told, are resisting God himself. This is the duty of private citizens.

00:43:07.520 | On the other hand, in verse 4, Paul makes it plain that it is the magistrate's duty to submit to God

00:43:13.200 | and rule according to his law. Notice the difference. Citizens are to submit to rulers

00:43:18.880 | and rulers are to submit to God. We are not told that each Christian ought to obey God's civil law

00:43:24.240 | willy-nilly, trying to force the hand of the magistrate. Rather, we are told to submit to

00:43:28.800 | the existing order, pay our taxes, pray for the conversion of the magistrate, and proclaim the

00:43:34.160 | gospel to him and to all men. Paul does not say in verse 6, "pay taxes whenever rulers are servants

00:43:41.280 | of God," but rather he says to "pay taxes because rulers are servants of God," whether they know it

00:43:51.360 | or not. We pay taxes for conscience's sake, as unto the Lord, not as unto men. The only proper

00:43:58.880 | place for civil resistance is the proclamation of the gospel, Acts 5 29, and this includes

00:44:04.480 | proclaiming the gospel to our children and thus Christian schools. It does not include tax strikes.

00:44:09.600 | Point 3. Tax strikes are disorderly. God is a God of order and it is sin which has brought disorder

00:44:16.240 | to the ordered cosmos that God set up. God's plan of redemption is designed to re-establish order

00:44:21.680 | in an orderly manner. This means that covenant headship must be respected as much as possible

00:44:26.560 | at all times. The theology of the Reformation recognized the distinction between the duties

00:44:31.360 | of citizens and the duties of officials as taught in scripture. Thus, the theology of the Reformation

00:44:37.040 | does not allow individual citizens to rebel against oppressive regimes. Rather, it is only

00:44:42.080 | an ordained civil magistrate who may, if all else fails, lead an insurrection against the regime.

00:44:48.160 | This is because God has commanded the lesser magistrate to obey his civil law, and thus the

00:44:53.280 | lesser magistrate has a duty to perform in this regard. If he is forced to declare his independence

00:44:58.480 | from the larger regime, he does not do so in the interest of maintaining his own rights,

00:45:03.280 | but in the interest of fulfilling his duties. The "right of revolution" in Reformation theology

00:45:10.800 | is distinguished from modern humanistic revolutionary ideas then at two points.

00:45:15.600 | The question of who may revolt, only magistrates or anybody, and the question of the grounds of

00:45:20.960 | revolution, duties or rights. It is not surprising that the advocates of Christian tax strikes are

00:45:28.000 | mostly found in groups which do not adhere to the theology of the Reformation. American individualism

00:45:33.520 | has given rise to the belief that there are, in the New Testament period, no longer legitimate

00:45:38.240 | office-bearers on earth to whom we are to give rear. Thus, a large number of Christians today

00:45:43.520 | are convinced that there are no real offices in the church or state, but only people carrying out

00:45:48.320 | various special functions. This thinking is anti-covenantal and naturally is found in Baptist

00:45:53.520 | circles far more readily than in Reformation churches, where the concept of covenant headship

00:45:58.000 | and submission for conscience's sake has been better preserved. The Bible, however, is not

00:46:02.560 | individualistic but covenantal, and this has implications not only for the doctrine of

00:46:07.120 | baptism but also for the doctrine of the right of revolution. Point number four. Tax strikes

00:46:12.720 | ignore the New Testament principle of invisibility and cooperation. In the Sermon on the Mount,

00:46:18.880 | Jesus told his people to be pleasant and cooperative with oppressive authorities, so as

00:46:23.520 | to remain invisible and thus able to work in peace. Nothing is clearer than his command, "But I say to

00:46:30.880 | you, do not resist him who is evil." Jesus illustrates this principle of cooperation and

00:46:39.120 | invisibility by saying, "And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your

00:46:43.920 | coat also; and whoever shall force you to go one mile, go with him too." (5:40-41) Was it right for

00:46:51.680 | the Roman authorities to steal shirts from the local population? Was it right for the state to

00:46:56.800 | force men to leave their jobs and carry a soldier's weapons the first mile out of town? No, clearly

00:47:02.480 | such actions violate the eighth commandment. Well, then, shouldn't the citizen resist this evil?

00:47:07.200 | Shouldn't he make a witness for the truth by standing up and refusing to cooperate?

00:47:12.160 | Would it not be better if everyone became a martyr rather than put up with his gross wickedness?

00:47:16.000 | No, says Jesus. It is a sin for the state to steal, but it is a sin for the citizen to rebel.

00:47:23.600 | What is the cash value of cooperation? Well, first of all, peace is gained. The state tends

00:47:30.720 | to leave people alone who cooperate with it, and peace is an indispensable prerequisite for social

00:47:35.920 | progress and economic advancement. The longer the kingdom is left alone, the better chance it has

00:47:40.640 | to grow. Second, invisibility is gained, since the anti-Christian state tends to ignore people who

00:47:47.120 | are not in flagrant rebellion. Invisibility allows the Christian counterculture to develop to great

00:47:52.480 | strength, unnoticed. Third, evangelism is enhanced, since the soldier will marvel when you carry his

00:47:59.040 | armor a second mile, and you may get the chance to tell him why you are doing this for him.

00:48:03.360 | Here again, the kingdom of Christ is advanced. Of course, ultimately the humanistic state will

00:48:08.400 | attack the church regardless and over the issue of who is God, the issue of worship. This, though,

00:48:13.840 | is the real issue, and the proper point at which to draw the line. By this time, however, the

00:48:18.480 | underground Christians will hopefully be powerful enough to thwart such a move. Tax strikes, in

00:48:23.520 | contrast, go in the opposite direction. By refusing to pay taxes, the striker calls attention to

00:48:28.480 | himself. He may argue that he is making a witness for Christ and for God's law, but in fact his

00:48:33.760 | witness is questionable. Christ has told him to pay, not to strike. Moreover, few will take his

00:48:40.000 | witness seriously. Most will think he is refusing to pay because he does not want to lose the money.

00:48:45.360 | Most will assume that his refusal to pay is nothing more than selfish materialism and rebellion,

00:48:50.480 | covered hypocritically by religious excuses. That is how people will look at it, and so the witness

00:48:56.640 | is compromised and lost. Does this advance the kingdom? How much better to be able to say,

00:49:02.640 | "I disapprove of these modern taxes, and I hope to help change them, but I pay them for

00:49:07.520 | conscience's sake because I am more concerned with principle than with my own money"? That

00:49:12.880 | is a witness people will hear. Part of the problem for legitimate tax strikers lies at just this

00:49:18.240 | point. The vast majority of tax strikers are not acting out of Christian principle, but either out

00:49:24.160 | of an anarcho-libertarian philosophy or out of pure personal covetousness. "This is my money."

00:49:30.400 | It is hard, I do not say impossible, for the Christian witness of a constitutional tax striker

00:49:36.320 | to be received in this present-day social context.

00:49:39.840 | Point number five. Tax strikes partake of the illusion of political power. The biblical insight

00:49:48.240 | that culture is an effect of religion is implicitly denied by political resistance movements.

00:49:56.080 | Politics does not change things. Rather, political change is a response to more fundamental

00:50:02.800 | cultural changes. What this means is that resistance movements always fail. The only

00:50:09.280 | resistant movements in the history of the world which have had any semblance of success have been

00:50:14.000 | those financed and supported by outside powers, such as the French resistance during World War II.

00:50:21.040 | The Bible recognizes this and thus puts emphasis on proclamation and education as the primary

00:50:28.000 | means of cultural transformation, though not the exclusive means. At present, Christian politicians

00:50:34.080 | can accomplish little to change the course of events. They can, however, use their offices

00:50:38.960 | and their campaigns as opportunities to witness and educate. Once the consensus of opinion in

00:50:44.720 | the United States has once again become Christian, the political order and its taxation will change

00:50:50.240 | in response. Tax strikers often argue that in the United States, each citizen has some limited

00:50:57.040 | powers of rule, since each citizen is a voter and each citizen may challenge bad laws in the courts.

00:51:04.000 | This is true and may form a rationale for refusal to pay taxes. In this case, the striker will make

00:51:10.320 | it plain that when push comes to shove, he will pay his taxes and submit, but that he is trying

00:51:15.360 | to get a test case before the courts. If, by its actions, the United States government shows that

00:51:21.120 | it is a pure tyranny, then we must submit to it as Israel had to submit to Rome. We are not to

00:51:27.760 | that point yet, however. Point number six. Tax strikes resist the judgment of God.

00:51:33.440 | As the United States has voted itself into sin, God has increased his judgments against us.

00:51:40.160 | One of his primary means of judgment is to put an oppressive state over a sinful people. If we

00:51:46.800 | recognize that we have sinned, the proper response is to be mute under the chastening hand of God and

00:51:52.080 | not rebel. If the United States is ruled by oppressors, it is because the United States

00:51:57.760 | deserves to be punished for its sins. The Bible recognizes that statism is the only proper

00:52:03.680 | condition for slaves. Thus, Joseph, an agent of God, helped reduce the population of Egypt to

00:52:10.400 | slavery (Genesis 47). It is a species of non-covenantal anarchy to assume that an evil

00:52:17.920 | population can be given the privileges of liberty or will even desire such privileges. What this

00:52:24.240 | means is that the virtues of free enterprise and low taxes will never be apparent to people until

00:52:30.160 | they have first changed their religious beliefs. If the tax revolt were successful, it would only

00:52:35.920 | lead to anarchy because of the immorality of the American populace. This is nothing to worry about,

00:52:41.760 | however, because most people want the "benefits" of big government more than they want lower taxes.

00:52:48.960 | They are slaves, and because of their lawless behavior, the only kind of civil order appropriate

00:52:54.240 | to them is a heavy-handed one. Modern Americans do not want to take care of their old people.

00:52:59.760 | They want to chuck them off into old folks' homes. Because of this irresponsibility,

00:53:04.080 | the government steps in. That means higher taxes. The only way to change this is for people to take

00:53:09.440 | care of their grandparents as they used to. It will accomplish little to attack the matter at

00:53:14.160 | the point of taxation. When God brought judgment on the kingdom of Judah, Jeremiah warned the

00:53:19.600 | people to submit to the chastening of the Lord. He told them to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. The

00:53:24.800 | rebels in Jeremiah's day, however, viewed him as a traitor and as an immoral man. They accused him

00:53:30.160 | of being a false prophet who wanted to "sell out the truth" to the heathen. Unlike Jeremiah,

00:53:36.560 | they were going to be loyal to God. They would fight Nebuchadnezzar. They would resist the

00:53:40.880 | oppressor. And they were wiped out. Over and over, they were wiped out. Jeremiah was right.

00:53:48.960 | When God judges us, we must submit to his judgment and preach his word. If we do so,

00:53:54.960 | in time, the situation will change.

00:53:56.960 | Point #7. Tax strikes work against dominion. There are varieties of tax strikers,

00:54:04.720 | and this criticism does not apply to all, but it applies to some. Some tax strikers are so

00:54:10.320 | concerned that the government not get any of their money that they restrict their dominion so as to

00:54:14.320 | avoid paying taxes. One talented man quit a job for which he had trained for years,

00:54:19.360 | just because the company he worked for insisted on the practice of withholding.

00:54:23.280 | He makes much less money now as a result. Thus, his tithe is proportionally lower,

00:54:29.360 | and the work of the kingdom suffers proportionally. One even hears of some who have taken

00:54:33.840 | "vows of poverty" to avoid taxes. And others move from place to place, fleeing IRS agents,

00:54:40.560 | thus thwarting the dominion mandate and disrupting family life.

00:54:43.840 | Now, this kind of thing strikes me as a great evil. The Bible commands us over and over again

00:54:48.880 | to take dominion over the earth. Those faithful in small things are put over larger things.

00:54:53.760 | Nothing is said about the state in all this. God expects us to work, to expand our work,

00:54:59.200 | to prosper, and to tithe, whether the state be good, bad, or indifferent. We do not do our work

00:55:05.360 | with reference to the state, but with reference to God. Those seeking to force the hand of the

00:55:10.640 | humanistic power state by limiting their work and dominion are not taking into account the fact that

00:55:16.160 | the heart of the king is in God's hands, and God can turn it whithersoever he wishes. (Proverbs 21:1)

00:55:22.480 | In the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai," the captured British soldiers are forced by the

00:55:27.040 | Japanese to build a bridge for them. Initially, the soldiers do very crummy work, seeking to

00:55:32.320 | obstruct the progress of the Japanese empire. The British commander, however, remarks that the

00:55:37.440 | bridge should be built to last forever, since someday the Japanese would be gone, and, by

00:55:42.800 | implication, the British would enjoy the benefits of the bridge. This is a future-oriented and

00:55:48.320 | positive view. Similarly, we must work hard, expand our dominion, and wait for God to put us

00:55:54.560 | in charge. This was Daniel's attitude. He did not try to obstruct the workings of the Babylonian

00:56:00.640 | empire, but sought to be a servant par excellence. As a result, he was trusted by Nebuchadnezzar,

00:56:06.640 | and God advanced him to a position of power in the Babylonian empire. Daniel became "ruler over the

00:56:12.640 | whole province of Babylon and chief prefect over the wise men of Babylon" (Daniel 2.48). Then,

00:56:18.640 | God struck Nebuchadnezzar with insanity for seven years (Daniel 4), during which time Daniel was

00:56:24.240 | doubtless the effective ruler of the empire. After Nebuchadnezzar recovered, he was convened

00:56:29.920 | and served the Lord. A second benefit of a work orientation is positive morale.

00:56:35.360 | The British commander in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" was concerned that his men find joy and

00:56:40.240 | pride in their work. The Japanese were not his concern. He left their fate to providence. People

00:56:46.080 | whose lives are dedicated to obstructing the enemy are building a negative outlook on life into

00:56:52.080 | themselves, whether they realize it or not. We are called to build. God will remove the enemy when

00:56:58.160 | he is ready. Alexander Solzhenitsyn makes the same point in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich".

00:57:04.160 | The day's labor consists of building a wall. At the end of the day, Ivan takes pride in having

00:57:10.000 | built a straight wall. Ivan's situation was blessed because he was permitted to engage in

00:57:15.760 | meaningful work, not simply moving stones from one pile to another and back again. The point,

00:57:21.280 | however, is that even in the Gulag archipelago, men can find satisfaction in work. Even if Ivan's

00:57:28.320 | wall is torn down the next day so that no one inherits the fruits of his labor, he is still

00:57:33.600 | a better man for having built it well. The Bible teaches many places that a work-oriented culture

00:57:40.240 | will overcome an oppressive statist culture. It is significant, for instance, that the judge

00:57:46.880 | Shamgar defeated the Philistines using an implement of work and that the evil Abimelech was

00:57:52.720 | crushed by an implement of work (Judges 3:31; 9, 7-15, 53). The principle is set out expressly

00:58:00.800 | in Zechariah 1:18-21. In that passage, Israel is oppressed by four horns and delivered by four

00:58:08.240 | craftsmen. The horn is a universal symbol for oppressive external power and force. To get the

00:58:14.560 | right picture, we need only think of the Vikings with their horned helmets, raiding and oppressing

00:58:18.960 | Christian civilization. God does not, however, destroy the pagan horns with four horns of his

00:58:24.160 | own. Rather, they are overcome by four craftsmen. Diligent, dominical labor overcomes oppression.

00:58:31.600 | A culture based on work and capital will overcome a culture based on conquest and raping. It is no

00:58:39.920 | accident that Jesus Christ was a carpenter. If Christians will be faithful and expand their

00:58:45.440 | dominion, pay their taxes without thinking about it for conscience's sake, and pay their tithes to

00:58:50.960 | the work of the kingdom, this country will be turned around soon enough. The argument of the

00:58:55.680 | persecuted early church was this, we pay our taxes to Caesar and we pray for Caesar. In fact,

00:59:01.360 | we are Caesar's best and most law-abiding citizens, but we cannot and will not worship Caesar. Thus,

00:59:08.880 | they made the issue crystal clear, and they won the day.

00:59:12.320 | Finally, let us turn to some considerations more positive toward tax strikes. To this point,

00:59:18.720 | we have been dealing with scriptural teachings in the abstract. Citizens of the United States

00:59:23.360 | of America must apply these teachings to their own historical and cultural situation.

00:59:27.600 | First, we need to ask a couple of questions. Do we live in a Roman Empire type of tyranny?

00:59:34.240 | If so, let us pay taxes and be as invisible as possible. Do we live in a period of judgment,

00:59:39.920 | like Jeremiah's? If so, let us submit to God's chastening rod and build for a future day.

00:59:45.520 | Given the behavior of the IRS, I think we live in a situation somewhat close to tyranny,

00:59:50.800 | and given the apostasy of the citizenry of the United States, I think we live in a situation

00:59:54.640 | rather close to Jeremiah's. For these reasons, we ought to approach tax striking with a great deal

01:00:00.960 | of care. Second, we ought to have a clear rationale if we are going to join the tax revolt

01:00:06.080 | in an open, public way. In general, the proper rationale runs something like this,

01:00:10.640 | "Caesar for the U.S. is the Constitution, and the IRS is engaged in unconstitutional activities.

01:00:17.040 | I, as a citizen ruler in the United States, am engaging in a legitimate and constitutional form

01:00:21.680 | of protest. I am working within the system." There are, of course, a variety of specific

01:00:27.760 | arguments used within this framework. The question of what constitutes income,

01:00:31.520 | the question of what constitutes real money, the question of the Fifth Amendment, and so on.

01:00:35.040 | Third, we need to count the cost. Luke 14, 28-32. Do we have an organization sufficiently powerful

01:00:42.640 | to take on the IRS? As more and more people join the tax revolt openly, the possibilities of

01:00:47.840 | rolling back the IRS increase. The point is to count the troops before declaring war.

01:00:53.040 | Counting the cost is also personal. The pioneers of the anti-IRS movement will emerge as heroes in

01:00:58.400 | due course during the 1980s. Not every person, however, is called or able to be such a pioneer.

01:01:04.240 | To fight the IRS, one needs to have a pretty sharp mind, a good acquaintance with the law,

01:01:08.720 | a tough and aggressive personality, a supportive family, and money. There is no doubt but that the

01:01:14.320 | IRS functions tyrannically. The question is whether the U.S. government as a whole is now

01:01:19.120 | a tyranny also. If you have a wife and small children, who will care for them when you are

01:01:23.600 | in jail? If your children are grown, keep in mind that the IRS will persecute them as a way of

01:01:28.320 | harassing you. Okay, you're tough and your wife is tough. Now how smart are you? How did you do

01:01:33.840 | in school? Do you know the law or do you have a sharp lawyer? Another question, how much money

01:01:38.720 | do you make? It will take lots of money to fight one court case after another. You may have to flee

01:01:43.600 | from state to state. Count the cost. Fourth, recognize that you are forfeiting a lot of

01:01:50.080 | present dominion. Your goal is to enhance future dominion for your children by rolling back

01:01:54.800 | oppression today. Also keep in mind that you are fighting a negative battle. The kingdom of Christ

01:02:00.240 | will advance through conversion and education. At best, your fight against the IRS, if moderately

01:02:06.080 | successful, will give a few more years for the Church to do her work. Face it, the people of the

01:02:11.440 | United States want the so-called "benefits" of big government. Only the gospel will change that.

01:02:17.520 | Fifth, recognize the right of other Christians to remain uninvolved. We all have costs to count.

01:02:24.640 | Not everyone can be a tax warrior. Sixth, and finally, keep your Christian principles in mind

01:02:30.640 | and before the public. Don't fall into the myth of political power. Don't try to make it out that

01:02:36.480 | the Bible requires you to do this. Make it clear that you have limited goals and that you are

01:02:41.600 | fighting on the basis of the principles of English common law and the U.S. Constitution, which you

01:02:48.000 | maintain are Caesar. Yours is not a revolutionary, but a conservative movement. And thus ends the

01:02:57.040 | essay. Now what's interesting is to reflect on what has happened since that article was published

01:03:04.000 | in April of 1981. My understanding of the last 40 years of history is that in essence, every single

01:03:14.240 | one of those arguments that were being pushed forward in the courts, etc., were lost, legally

01:03:20.640 | speaking. You can, if you consider yourself to be competent at legal thinking, you can consider

01:03:27.360 | whether you think they should have lost or not. From time to time I get people who send me very

01:03:32.000 | interesting articles, discussions, etc., on the question of what does the law say, etc. As far as

01:03:40.320 | I'm concerned, it's not a matter of what the law says or what the law doesn't say. It's just a

01:03:44.400 | matter of who's got the guns and who wants the money. And the question is, what is the Christian

01:03:50.720 | responsibility towards tyrants? What do you do? So I thought that Jordan did a good job of

01:03:57.840 | discussing that. There are other, you can find other discussions, very active in the Mennonite

01:04:03.520 | community. You can find some discussion about war taxes and whatnot in the Mennonite community. You

01:04:09.280 | can find other things over history that many people have wrestled with these things. But as

01:04:15.120 | far as I'm concerned, I think Jordan's article does a good job of striking to the heart of the

01:04:20.080 | matter. I remain sympathetic and appreciate those who feel strongly about tax resistance. But for

01:04:29.920 | many of the reasons outlined in that article, and just simply the sheer practicality of it,

01:04:34.560 | does not seem wise. I do not think that it is something that people should engage in.

01:04:39.040 | I would say that if you want to follow the legal methods that avoids the risk of being imprisoned,

01:04:46.720 | which is of course incredibly important, you can think about whether it's worthwhile to reduce your

01:04:51.760 | income. As far as I'm concerned, it seems much wiser to me if you can make $400,000 a year.

01:05:00.240 | It seems much wiser to me to make $400,000 a year and set up a charitable organization dedicated to

01:05:07.280 | whatever the specific cause are, and then fund it with $200,000 per year of your income,

01:05:13.360 | take a $200,000 per year tax deduction, let the US government keep the rest of it. That seems a lot

01:05:18.240 | more effective than lowering your taxable income to $40,000 per year so that you don't pay federal

01:05:24.000 | income taxes. When you look at it and you understand financial planning, I think there are

01:05:28.560 | enough answers and solutions in good financial planning where you can stay on the right side of

01:05:33.760 | the law, you can be ignored and quiet by the IRS, you don't wind up being on the front page of a

01:05:39.440 | newspaper, you don't wind up being imprisoned, you can follow the law, and yet you can make much more

01:05:44.400 | productive change. Even if you don't, like, let's say that you have the opportunity, you say, "I

01:05:50.160 | have the capacity to serve people effectively enough to make a half a million dollars a year,

01:05:55.040 | but that means I'm going to owe some tax." Well, do it. Owe the tax. But then again, set up the

01:06:01.440 | appropriate organizations to accomplish some appropriate change in the local community.

01:06:07.920 | And if you, I'd much rather stroke a check for $100,000 to the IRS, let's say, let me just give

01:06:14.160 | you a simple example. What is better served? Let's say that you can earn, you can live on $50,000

01:06:20.640 | tax-free for round numbers. And so you could become a tax protester, lower your income to

01:06:26.320 | $50,000 and live on that so that you don't wind up owing the tax. Or you can work hard, you can

01:06:33.040 | exercise the talents and the skills and the knowledge and the ability that God has given you

01:06:37.600 | effectively, and you can earn half a million dollars. Well, earn the half a million dollars,

01:06:42.080 | put aside the 50, live on 50,000, freeing up 450. If you have to write a check for 100 to the

01:06:48.720 | government, write a check for 100 to the government and put the other 350 to work doing something

01:06:53.840 | useful. Take care of the widows and the orphans that live in your community. Take care of the

01:06:58.880 | poor. Take care of the people who are hungry. Preach the gospel. Endow the churches. Endow the

01:07:04.560 | people who are busy, who are doing good work. And that $350,000 will go so much farther than your

01:07:11.760 | tiny little voice in a tax protest movement. So that's how I see it. All of us have to wrestle

01:07:19.200 | with these things and settle them before the Lord, but that's how I see it. Hope that was helpful to

01:07:23.920 | you. It's an interesting topic. I've never heard a personal finance show that talked about tax

01:07:27.760 | protesting in anything other than a mocking way, which I don't think is a...it's very insulting

01:07:32.560 | because many millions of people have legitimate crises of conscience when it comes to these

01:07:37.680 | things. And so I hope that I've done a good job of dealing with it seriously, being careful with

01:07:43.200 | my language, talking about the solutions and the opportunities. I'll close today by telling you

01:07:49.200 | about my How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis course. One component of

01:07:53.840 | that course is international expatriation. And one of my reasons for expatriating internationally,

01:08:01.600 | among other things, was I didn't ever want to be in a position where I didn't have a chance

01:08:06.800 | to get out of the United States if I came to the point that my conscience wouldn't allow me to

01:08:12.720 | have my tax money going towards things that are immoral. I've thought about it a lot over the

01:08:18.240 | years. I've wrestled with it. I've come to the point that...come to the positions I've just

01:08:22.800 | described. But I didn't...I wouldn't want to be stuck in a position where I was forced to pay

01:08:27.440 | taxes to a government that's engaged in immoral behavior. Well, what do you do? If you want to

01:08:32.480 | stay out of prison, if you want to follow the law, if you want to have a good witness of being a

01:08:36.800 | loyal citizen and a good subject of the king, what do you do? Well, one of the few options I see is

01:08:44.240 | to leave. Peacefully leave. And you're not hurting anybody, you're not harming anybody, you're just

01:08:50.880 | simply exercising your right of withdrawal. And that seems to me to be a healthy thing to do.

01:08:56.240 | Well, interestingly, that doesn't have to be something to be done in a crisis. It's an effective

01:09:00.960 | way of solving...of planning for a crisis. But it's also an extremely effective way of planning

01:09:06.560 | for things like increasing taxation and using the tax code as it exists. If you're a U.S. citizen,

01:09:14.160 | you can, as I described...described elsewhere on the show, you can live outside the United States

01:09:19.360 | and you can earn $105,000 a year not owing any taxes to the United States government. So if you

01:09:24.480 | want to be in finance, go work in the Cayman Islands, go work in Dubai. You don't owe any taxes

01:09:27.920 | to those governments, any income taxes to those governments, and you'll take advantage of your

01:09:33.040 | foreign earned income exclusion to the U.S. government. And if you want to be a war tax

01:09:36.800 | processor, that seems to me to be a better thing than living in the United States. Right? Just

01:09:42.640 | seems like an effective solution. And if you're a citizen of other countries as well, you can always

01:09:48.480 | expatriate. I've spoken to people who were German. Germans don't allow their citizens to homeschool,

01:09:54.400 | so you can stay in Germany and you can homeschool your children. You can fight it out with the

01:09:58.000 | police and you can battle them out, as a Christian homeschooling family did a number of years ago,

01:10:04.800 | all the way to the German Supreme Court. Or you can simply leave and you can homeschool your

01:10:09.280 | children in any corner of the world where such practices are legal. And in fact, as a German

01:10:14.960 | tourist, you can pretty much go anywhere and nobody will bother you. So it seems more effective

01:10:19.520 | and wise to me to avoid those conflicts and exercise your option to leave. If you're interested

01:10:25.840 | in how to prepare for an economic crisis to stay, I cover that too. But if you're interested in how

01:10:31.200 | you can avoid an economic crisis by leaving and that economic crisis could be personal, could be

01:10:36.320 | other things as well, I think you would enjoy my course called How to Survive and Thrive During

01:10:39.680 | the Coming Economic Crisis. You can find that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.

01:10:44.720 | Radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.

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01:10:52.400 | presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your

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RPF0663-Should_Christians_Participate_in_Tax_Strikes_and_Tax_Protest_Movements