Public Affairs Quarterly

Volume 26, Number 2, April 2012

CONSCIENTIOUS TAX OBJECTION:

WHY THE LIBERAL STATE MUST
ACCOMMODATE TAX RESISTERS
Jason Brennan

n Tax Day (April 15) in 2009, Tea Party protestors held rallies in 750
different cities across the United States. Tea Partiers commonly believe
that the federal government is too big, too corrupt, and too willing to expropriate
resources from the many to pay off the well-connected few. They see the government not as an engine of peace and social justice, but as an engine of exploitation.
On their view, Washington consists of powerful insiders who thwart the interests
of the common person.
Some (but not many) of these Tea Partiers are conscientious tax resisters. They
do not wish to pay taxes because they believe doing so would be deeply unjust.
Some of them advocate withholding taxes, and some of them actively practice tax
withholding. Some refuse to pay taxes because they do not wish to pay for Wall
Street bailouts. Others do not wish to pay for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Still others refuse because they think ObamaCare will destroy American health
care and the American economy.
What should the state do in response to these conscientious tax resisters?
(Note that I will use conscientious resistance, conscientious objection, and
conscientious refusal interchangeably.) Should the state fine conscientious tax
resisters and/or jail them for failing to pay their taxes? Or does the state have an
obligation to accommodate them in some way?
What the state should do in response to correct conscientious resisters is
relatively straightforward: since the resister is right, and the state is wrong, the
state should revoke its laws (through whatever fair and just procedure it has for
revoking laws). For example, suppose I refuse to fight a war because I believe
the war is illegitimate, and suppose my belief is true. If so, then by hypothesis,
what the state ought to do in response to my objections is to heed them and not
fight the war. So, the philosophically interesting questions about conscientious
resistance are those where the state acts legitimately, and where the conscientious
resister is mistaken in thinking that state is acting wrongly.

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Suppose that the Tea Partys conscientious tax resisters are mistaken. They
believe that paying taxes is wrong, but let us suppose that their belief is false. In
this paper, I will argue that states should accommodate such resisters, even when
the resisters are wrong to object and are morally obligated to pay their taxes.
Many believe that liberal states must accommodate conscientious objectors to
war during conscription. However, I will argue, most of the reasons for accommodating conscientious objection to fighting in wars also apply to conscientious
tax resistance. There are no good grounds for accommodating war objection but
not tax objection. If my argument succeeds, it presumably shows that many kinds
of conscientious objection must be accommodated.
I am not concerned here to explain when citizens have an obligation to disobey the law, or to describe the right way to engage in civil disobedience. These
are important questions, but they are questions about what individual citizens
should do. Instead, I am interested in what governments ought to do in response
to citizens who conscientiously disobey certain laws.
I will argue that liberal states must accommodate conscientious tax objectors
for much the same reasons they must accommodate war objectors. An outline of
my argument is as follows.
1. Liberal states ought to accommodate and tolerate conscientious
objection to fighting in wars.
2. If liberal states ought to accommodate and tolerate conscientious
objection to fighting in wars, then states ought to tolerate and
accommodate conscientious objection to supporting many other state
activities through taxes, unless conscientious objection to war merits
special consideration.
3. Conscientious objection to war does not merit special consideration.
4. Therefore, conscientious objection to supporting many other state
activities through taxes ought to be tolerated and accommodated;
that is, liberal states must accommodate conscientious tax objectors.
My plan for this paper is first to explain the type of tax objection I have in
mind. Next, I will outline some major reasons why conscientious objection
ought to be accommodated, and then give a sketch of a theory of when and
how such accommodation should occur. I will then consider and respond to a
series of objections that attempt to show we might have reason to accommodate
conscientious objection to fighting in war but not paying taxes. Note also that
this paper will be written from the standpoint of contemporary liberal political
philosophy. I will assume, but will not argue, that some sort of liberal theory
of legitimacy is correct. Non-liberal readers can regard this paper as drawing
out the implications of liberal political philosophy, even if they dispute my
liberal premises.

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1. Wrongful Conscientious Tax Resistance

The most philosophically interesting cases of conscientious refusal to fight in wars
are those in which the objector is wrong, the war is just, the state is legitimate,
and the objector ought to fight. Many political theorists hold that even under these
circumstances, the objector should be exempted from fighting. As Carl Cohen
says, as he goes on to defend conscientious objectors, In saying that a person is
a genuine conscientious objector, we say nothing about the objective correctness
or incorrectness of his judgments, but only that he has made them reflectively
and honestly and is prepared to stand for them.1
Conscription is not the only possible target of conscientious refusal. One might
refuse to salute the flag or perform certain state-required acts of piety that violate
ones religion.2 One might refuse to send ones children to state schools. Or, one
might object to paying certain taxes because these taxes will support state activities one finds unconscionable.
In this paper, I will use a populist libertarian tax objector as an example, but the
type of argument I make here generalizes to others. For instances of war-based
tax objection, consider that Noam Chomsky and Gloria Steinem withheld taxes
during the Vietnam War. A Catholic might object to paying taxes to support stem
cell research or government-funded abortions. A vegan could object to her taxes
being used to subsidize animal factory farming.
Let us suppose that the libertarian lives under what is in fact an adequately just,
legitimate social democratic state. The libertarian believes, sincerely but incorrectly,
that her social democratic state is deeply, terribly unjust, though not as deeply, terribly unjust as various dictatorships and totalitarian societies around the world. She
believes that social democracies in practice are corrupt, predatory regimes under
which a circle of elites and its supporting coalition expropriate resources from the
many for the sake of the few,3 that social democracies are run by special interest
groups and as such minimize the value of the political liberties, that so-called welfare
measures actually keep citizens more poor over time than they otherwise would be,
that government expenditures go largely to socially destructive rent-seeking, that
many of the regulations issued by such regimes interfere with peoples liberties
without much benefit to the majority, that government activities retard economic
growth and thus over time retard the growth of positive liberty, that the states wars
are unjust wars of acquisition, and the like.
Now, let us suppose that the libertarian finds compliance with the tax laws
unconscionable. In her view, paying taxes to support the police, law courts, and
perhaps certain public goods (such as roads and environmental protection) is
justified. However, after years of study and reflection, she genuinely and strongly
believes that many state activities are deeply, terribly unjust. In her view, paying
taxes to support most of the states activities deeply violates her deepest, most
strongly held personal convictions and sense of justice. On her view, support-

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ing these institutions through taxes makes her an agent of injustice. She would
sacrifice her integrity, sense of self, and sense of justice were she to pay taxes.
In her view, paying taxes is equivalent to supporting the predation of the weak
by the strong. She finds this especially heinous because the state portrays itself
as the protector of the weak.
Now, by hypothesis, she is mistaken about all of this. However, I will argue
that she ought to be allowed to withhold some of her taxes from the state, even
though she is mistaken.4
My purpose is to determine the extent to which citizens must be permitted to
refuse to comply with just laws. Conscientious refusal is special in theories of
legitimacy because it concerns the enforceability of particular rules for particular
people. If conscientious refusal must sometimes be tolerated, then this shows that
the justice of the rules and the overall legitimacy of the state issuing the rules are
not sufficient for the state to compel certain people to obey certain rules.
Taxation is especially interesting because it has to do with property. On most
views, including even some libertarian views, rights to external property and
income are less central and fundamental than rights of free speech, freedom of
conscience, bodily integrity, and so on. Prima facie, the case for accommodating conscientious tax resistance seems weaker than the case for accommodating
conscientious objections to war. However, if we discover that conscientious tax
resistance must be accommodated, this presumably means that many other targets
of refusal must be accommodated as well.
Now, since we are stipulating that the tax laws and the institutions the taxes
support are just, then the libertarian ought not object to them and ought to obey.5
However, there she is, objecting and disobeying. What should the state do with
her? Throw her in jail? Fine her? Enforce specific compliance? Here, I will argue
that it ought to accommodate her instead.

2. What Is Conscientious Objection?

We can describe conscientious objection as refusal to comply with a law or edict
because compliance is unconscionable. To say that a person finds an act unconscionable is to say that she believes performing the act deeply violates her deepest
moral values, integrity, or sense of self. A conscientious objector or resister is a
person who refuses to comply with a law or edict because she believes compliance is deeply unjust.6
Note that a person can believe a law is deeply unjust, and believe that it is
deeply unjust for her to be coerced into complying with the law, but not believe
it is unjust for her to comply with the law, given that she is coerced.7 A person
could believe that being coerced into compliance absolves her from responsibility
for performing an unjust act or complying with an unjust law. (I was only taking
ordersat gunpoint.) So, a conscientious resister believes that compliance with

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a law or edict is deeply unjust, and that compliance is not excused just because
she is coerced. (I must not follow these orders, even at gunpoint.)
Not just any disagreement with a law or edict counts as conscientious objection.
Disagreement needs to be sufficiently deep. As an instance of shallow objection, I
might disagree with the zoning boards edict that I may not place my business on
some street. However, I do not think it is morally forbidden to comply with their
regulations. On the other hand, performing certain actions would obliterate my
integrity. They would strongly violate my deepest moral concerns. So, for instance,
if the state demanded I bomb innocents to help the state fight a war of acquisition,
I cannot comply without being morally destroyed. Compliance is unconscionable.
The difference between the first and second case seems to be that in the first, from
my perspective, the values of fair play and of abiding by democratic procedures
override my commitment to certain outcomes I wish those procedures had produced.
Not so in the second case. At a certain point, from any reasonable persons perspective, playing the democratic game fairly becomes less important than not playing
the game at all. A commitment to fair play in democracy might sometimes require
citizens to act contrary to what they think is right, but that does not mean the state
should force them to commit what they consider grave injustices.

3. Considerations in Favor of Accommodating

Conscientious Objection
Even if the libertarian tax resister should not resist, this does not imply that the
state should jail or punish her for resisting. The question of whether the liberal
state should tolerate resisters is distinct from the question of whether resisters
should resist.
In this section, I consider why liberal states should accommodate conscientious objection. I will review various reasons liberals have tended to accept that
conscientious objection must at least sometimes be tolerated and accommodated.
I am not concerned to defend these reasons against all objections. Rather, my
goal is to show that theorists who think objectors to war should be accommodated
must also accept that tax resistance should be accommodated. What is striking is
that the kinds of considerations theorists offer in favor of tolerating conscientious
objection to war are rather generalif they justify accommodating conscientious
objection to war, they justify accommodating other kinds of conscientious objection as well. Section 4 considers and rejects the view that there is something
special about conscientious objection to fighting that explains why it should be
tolerated but other sorts of objection should not.
Overall, liberal states have good reasons to accommodate conscientious refusal
under some circumstances. Such accommodation tends
A. to promote and protect justice and rights;
B. to increase stability by reducing the strains of commitment;

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C. to provide a vehicle for people with minority views to identify with the
greater body politic rather than to see themselves as victims of the
majority; and
D. to reinforce the liberal concern to be justifiable to many reasonable
points of view, to allow for substantive freedom of conscience, and
to create a society in which many people can pursue their vision
of the good.
I will discuss each of these points in turn.

A. Promoting Justice and Rights

Suppose I am king. Suppose I know, or should know, that I am not a perfectly
virtuous ruler. I know, or should know, that I am prone to anger, corruption, and
overreaction, just as other kings have been. If so, then when I make decisions
and impose rules on my subjects, I should assume that I could be wrong, unjust,
or corrupt, and not even know it. I should tread as lightly as possible. When I see
citizens resisting my edicts on grounds that I am acting unjustly, I should take
this very seriously. If I knew I never made mistakes, I would not need to operate
with self-skepticism, but if I know that I am especially prone to mistakes, then I
should be self-skeptical. My self-skepticism would tend to make me a better king.
Most states throughout history have been unjust. Most leaders who claimed
to act justly did not do so. Power tends to corrupt, and accordingly, many state
activities have been unjust. When citizens dissent and disobey, the natural impulse
of most leaders, throughout history, has been to squash resistance. The impulse
to draw citizens in line may itself be corrupting.
Requiring the state to tolerate and accommodate some conscientious refusal
serves as a check against state corruption.8 States cannot operate on the assumption that they never make mistakes, or even that all mistakes and violations of
justice can be corrected through the democratic process. Government leaders
make decisions of major importance despite having limited information. Leaders
occupy unique positions and face unique temptations, and so are especially prone
to being corrupted. In light of this, states should adopt a position of tolerating and
trying to accommodate dissent, rather than trying to squash it. This will tend to
make states more just rather than less.9

B. Increasing Stability
Carl Cohen suggests that conscientious objection is a device of the body politic.
In liberal societies, there is an implicit recognition that obedience to certain of
its own laws might be held, by good and reasonable men, to be a moral evil.
Liberal societies wish to minimize the likelihood of forcing reasonable people to
choose between obedience to the law and committing what they regard (rightly
or wrongly) as a grave injustice.10 They do not wish to impose intolerably high

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strains of commitments upon reasonable citizens (or any citizens, really), even
when these citizens are mistaken.
Cohen describes conscientious objection as a legal pressure valve, deliberately
devised to relieve the tension between deeply held moral convictions and the
demands of the law, when that tension becomes too extreme.11 In a similar vein,
John Rawls says that civil disobedience is a stabilizing force in democracy. It
provides a final outlet for citizens to express their dissatisfaction with the justice
of their state. It helps reinforce and secure civil liberties and justice by providing
a final vehicle to make visible perceived state injustices, especially when other
democratic means have failed, are too slow, or are too costly, or when citizens
reasonably believe that direct democratic methods will fail, as they often do.12

C. Bringing in Minorities
The liberal state has another interest in accepting conscientious refusal. Persistent
ideological minorities often believe themselves to be disenfranchised. They vote,
but they never get their way, and so having a vote does not help them. Permitting
conscientious refusal can be a low-cost way to accommodate them. Carl Cohen
says that citizens in general should wish to accommodate refusal under some
circumstances, because they should recognize that they themselves may one
day be faced with having to obey a law or edict they find intolerable.13 So, most
citizens have grounds for accepting a rule favoring accommodation.

D. The Spirit of Liberal Legitimacy

If a law is just and issued by a just, legitimate state, one might think it follows
that citizens may be forced to obey. However, for liberal states, this cannot be
enough. The liberal states commitments to tolerance, pluralism, and liberal
legitimacy require the state to take disagreements from citizens seriously, even
when the citizens have committed to abide by the rules of the game. The liberal
state has to hold itself accountable to reasonable people, even when these people
make an honest mistake.
One of the main purposes of the liberal state is to enable people to develop a
sense of justice, and to formulate and live by their own conceptions of the good
life. While state action will always affect the ease of achieving some conceptions
of the good over others, insofar as is possible, liberal states try to minimize the
obstacles they impose on reasonable citizens in achieving their conceptions of the
good. Liberal states must be wary of asking people to sacrifice their integrity to
comply with a law, especially if noncompliance does not violate anyones rights.
In the case of conscientious objectors to war, it is unreasonable to say: Obey,
persuade, or leave. This leaves the conscientious objector with three bad options:
compliance, persuasion, or exile. Compliance would destroy her. Persuasion through
the democratic forum is difficult. As Peter Suber says, Legal channels can take too

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long, and people are born to live, not to lobby.14 The chance of reform through
normal legal channels might be vanishingly small. The resister might have the legal
deck stacked against her. The resister might even regard the democratic system as
so corrupted that attempting to work within normal legal channels is, in her view,
to comply with injustice.15 There are always further legal channels, more lobbying
and letter writing could always be done, but in the meantime, from the objectors
perspective, injustice continues. Demanding that citizens always go through the law
to change the law pre-supposes too optimistic a view of democracy. Alternatively,
leaving is no real option. Voluntary emigration is costly. It means losing a life with
friends and family, the loss of property, and having to adopt a new culture. People
might have nowhere better to go, but even if so, this does not mean that states can
rest on their laurels. Being better than the alternatives, even being perfect, is not
enough to permit a state to squash all resistance.

E. Summary
These are the kinds of reasons liberal political theorists have offered in favor of
states accommodating conscientious resistance. Many times, the theorists were
especially interested in defending conscientious refusal to fight in wars. However,
notice that the reasons they offered are quite general, and on their face apply
equally well to other targets of conscientious resistance. Their arguments above
seem to apply equally well to conscientious tax resistance as to conscientious
refusal to fight. In section 5, I will discuss whether conscientious refusal to fight
in wars is special, such that states have an obligation to accommodate this kind
of resistance, but not tax resistance.

4. How to Accommodate Objectors

Whether liberal states should accommodate tax resisters depends in part on
what exactly it takes to accommodate them. In this section, I will outline some
plausible principles of accommodation and explain how they would work in the
case of tax resistance. I am not trying here to provide the best possible theory of
accommodation. Instead, I just want to articulate some principles that are good
enough to show that it could be reasonable to accommodate tax resisters.
The states appropriate response to conscientious objection is plausibly covered
by two principles of accommodation.
1. The state should tolerate genuine conscientious refusal (as opposed to
mere disagreement) provided tolerating the refusal does not violate
others basic moral rights or cause the social order to collapse.
2. The sanction imposed on the conscientious objector for her refusal
should be to require her to do whatever conscionable action is closest
to what is required of other citizens.

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The reasoning behind the first principle is that the liberal state is committed first
to protecting citizens equal basic liberties. A racist slave-owner might hold that
freeing his slaves is unconscionable and conscientiously refuse to comply. Yet, his
actions violate the rights of his slaves, and their rights take precedence over both
his desire to live conscionably and the states goal of not imposing high strains of
commitment upon him. When the state accommodates a conscientious objector,
this tends to impose some expense on others, but the state cannot accommodate
objectors at the expense of others rights.
Note that the first principle only refers to basic moral rightsthe rights covered
and mentioned in a theory of justice. Societies will create a variety of legal rights
and obligations as artifacts of their legal systems. In order to satisfy certain principles of justice, they may create certain legal rights. However, by basic moral
rights in principle 1, I mean only those rights that all people have as a matter
of justice, irrespective of their societys legal system. So, for instance, given that
my younger son was born in Rhode Island this past year, and given the laws of
Rhode Island, my son has a legal right to receive $100 in the CollegeBoundfund
from the state. Principle 1 is not about rights like these. Instead, it concerns basic
rights, such as the rights against arbitrary search and seizure, rights to life, and
possibly a right to a social minimumthat is, whatever rights all societies must
respect as a matter of justice.
Similarly, if accommodating conscientious resisters would lead to a complete
collapse of civil society, this would be strong ground not to accommodate them.
After all, if civil society collapses, then no ones rights and freedoms will be
protected.
The second principle of accommodation is grounded in fairness. The liberal
state is committed to treating its citizens fairly, as equals. It must avoid creating
different classes of citizens with different kinds of duties. When the state accommodates dissent, it must avoid causing non-dissenters to see themselves as victims
of injustice. If the state simply lets the objector go free, then non-objectors can
protest that it is unfair that they must bear additional burdens. For instance, when
a pacifist conscripted for a just war refuses to fight, the state might require him to
perform comparable service as a medic. If an objector believes that all wars are
deeply unjust, performing any military service is intolerable, or that this particular
war is deeply unjust, the state might require some other form of national service
consonant with the objectors views.16
There are many ways to accommodate the libertarian tax objector. She believes
that supporting certain government institutions is conscionable, and so it might
be possible to earmark her taxes toward those institutions. On the other hand,
since earmarking is plausibly viewed as an accounting fictionthe money will
really just go into a common poolthe state might allow her to reduce her taxes
to reflect the level of taxation that would exist in a state she regards as conscionable to support. This does not mean that her taxes will be reduced to the levels

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expected in a libertarian state, as the libertarian might find something between

social democracy and the minimal state conscionable. Or, the state might also or
instead require her to provide funding to private charities at a level comparable
to her tax reduction.
These are all mere suggestions. I think the two principles of accommodation
outlined above are a good start, if not the final word, in explaining how to deal
with objectors. The appropriate response to objectors depends on the particular
beliefs of the objector and the needs of the community. My goal here is not to
explain exactly how the libertarian tax resister must be accommodated, but to
argue that she should be accommodated.

5. Is Conscription Special?
States have stronger reasons to accommodate conscientious refusal to fight just
wars than for accommodating conscientious resisters to just taxation. Fighting
risks death. Even if sometimes the state may demand that citizens take that risk, it
is worse to ask someone to risk dying to fight for a cause she finds unconscionable
than to ask someone to pay for a cause she finds unconscionable. However, the
reasons we have to accommodate conscientious war objectors also apply to conscientious tax objectors. There are no good grounds to accept one but not the other.
Conscription is generally a greater violation of a persons liberty than taxation.
I say generally because a year of service in a low-risk military occupation could
be a less severe violation than a permanent 99 percent income tax rate. However,
note that we are discussing cases where the objectors are wrong and the state is
right. So, in the case of just conscription, even if a persons liberty is violated, it
is violated rightly, all things considered.
James Childress says: It may ... be possible to single out military service for
special treatment because killing human beings is considered prima facie wrong
from practically all moral standpoints.17 His argument appears to be that states
have special reasons to tolerate conscientious objection to war, but not other targets
of resistance, because either (a) the objectors to war are more likely to be right
than objectors to other activities, or (b) killing is likely to be more unconscionable
than other actions. There are a number of worries about this reasoning.
First, sometimes killing is right, even obligatory. Sometimes it is even unreasonable for a person to refuse to a kill another person; that is, there can be cases
where no reasonable person could disagree that killing is obligatory. Yet, we still
tolerate conscientious objection to war even though the states official stance is
that the war is just and that killing enemy combatants is right. Sometimes, a state
is right to make war. There are times when the objector is wronghe should grab
a gun and start shooting. Childresss argument implies that incorrect and unreasonable objections to war should be accommodated, but correct and reasonable
objections to taxation should not.

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As we discussed above, states should adopt a policy of accommodation in part

because leaders should recognize that they have a tendency to make mistakes, and
accordingly they should be self-skeptical and accommodating of serious dissent.
Childress might be right that a random war resister is more likely to be right than
a random tax resister. However, states also have a bad track record of using taxes
to promote bad ends (including unjust wars). So, it is not as though the probability
that taxes will be used for unconscionable ends is so low that states should not
accommodate taxes resisters.
Second, while killing is considered prima facie wrong from nearly all moral
standpoints, paying someone to kill is also prima facie wrong on nearly all moral
standpoints. If the wrongness or unconscionableness of killing gives states a
reason to accommodate war objectors, it at least gives states similar reasons to
accommodate tax objectors who object to paying for those wars. Henry David
Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax because the money would be used to wage the
Mexican War and enforce black slavery. (Thoreau paid taxes for highways, but
refused to help the United States steal land from Mexico.) He said,
See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen
say, I should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection
of the slaves, or to march to Mexico, see if I would go; and yet these very
men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least by their
money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve
in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government
which makes the war.18
If I pay income taxes on my labor, and these taxes are used to support an unjust
war, then I have indirectly facilitated an unjust war. I am to that extent an agent of
injustice. For the conscientious war objector, this can be nearly as unconscionable as
killing people oneself.19 So, if there are grounds for tolerating objections to fighting,
there are also grounds for tolerating objections to paying for this fighting. That is,
states should accommodate conscientious tax objection to wars, at the very least.
Third, note that stealing, predation, and rigidifying poverty are considered prima
facie wrong on practically all moral standpoints as well. The libertarian tax resister
regards the social democratic state as a thieving, rent-seeking, special-interestgroup-run, predatory machine at odds with social justice. Killing and paying for
killing are indeed worse than stealing, creating a predatory state, paying to keep
people poor, reducing political liberties, and the like. However, it is unclear why
this would make killing special, as opposed to merely worse. One should find it
unconscionable to kill innocents, or pay to have them killed, but one should also
find it unconscionable to help impose or maintain a predatory political regime
on unsuspecting, innocent, or misguided people.
Rawls says: [U]nless tax laws, for example, are clearly designed to attack
or abridge a basic equal liberty, they should not normally be protested by civil
disobedience.20 It is clear he intends this point to extend to conscientious objec-

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tion. He says it is easier to tell whether a violation of the first principle of justice
(which protects equal basic liberties) has occurred rather than to determine
whether the difference principle has or has not been satisfied. However, our libertarian conscientious tax objector claims that social democracy violates equal
basic political liberties by creating a rent-seeking, special-interest-based state.
Also, while Rawls is correct to note that it is easier to tell if liberties as opposed
to distributive justice have been violated, there must at least be some cases where
a person reasonably believes that distributive justice has been deeply violated
and that conscientious objection (or civil disobedience) is necessary to avoid
complicity in this violation.21
Thoreau claims that taxes are an appropriate, if not uniquely appropriate, target
of resistance. He says:
I meet this American government, or its representative, the State government,
directly, and face to face, once a year, no more, in the person of its tax-gatherer;
this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it
then says distinctly, recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in
the present posture of affairs, the indispensible mode of treating with it on this
head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then.22
Tax resistance for Thoreau was (among other things) a form of political expression
against the state, a refusal to accept its claims to justice and legitimacy. Refusing
to pay taxes is a form of protest. Paying taxes is a way of paying ones debts to
society, and refusing to pay can be a way of expressing contempt for injustice. So
it might be with the libertarian tax objector. Her refusal to pay taxes is both a way
of keeping her hands clean (she can claim that she is not an agent of injustice)
and of expressing her dissatisfaction with the government.
However, suppose Rawls is right that tax policies should not normally be
subjects of civil disobedience or conscientious objectors. What this shows, at
most, is that the libertarian tax objector is wrong to object. Yet we have already
stipulated that she is wrong to object, and so the question before us is what the
liberal state ought to do about her objections. If certain types of policies are never
proper targets of conscientious objection, this may show that citizens should
not object to them, but it does not show that the state may force citizens who do
(wrongfully) object to obey.
Rawls notes that states generally do not mind accommodating pacifists, but
have been resistant to accommodating conscientious objectors to particular wars.
Pacifists are rare, so accommodating them does little to hinder the states ability
to wage unjust wars of conquest and acquisition. States are more resistant to accommodating conscientious objectors to particular wars, as such accommodation
will tend to undermine a states ability to wage unjust wars. Rawls regards this
as a potential reason to accord objection to war special status. He says that wars
tend to be unjust and state power tends to be predatory. So, this makes a general
willingness to resist the states claims ... all the more necessary.23

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However, this point generalizes. Not only most wars, but also most states
and most state activity throughout history have been predatory and unjust. Most
states have been agents of oppression and exploitation against their citizens. Our
hypothetical libertarian is incorrect to regard her state as unjust, but she is correct to hold that most states, including many democratic states, have been unjust,
predatory, rent-seeking regimes.
For this reasons, I do not yet see a compelling case to regard conscientious
resistance to conscription as morally special. Our grounds for accommodating
resistance to conscription apply also to accommodating tax resistance.

6. Problems with Determining Sincerity

and Depth of Objections
So far, I have argued that if states should accommodate conscientious resistance
to conscription, then they should also accommodate conscientious resistance
to taxation. However, perhaps accommodating the latter form of conscientious
resistance would be infeasible or too costly in a way that the former would not.
First, one might object that even if there are as good moral considerations for
accommodating tax objection as war objection, in the former case but not the
latter, it will be difficult and costly to separate authentic conscientious objectors
from liars looking for a tax break. This objection holds that accommodating
tax objectors is infeasible for epistemic reasons. Second, one might object that
accommodating tax objectors might come at the expense of securing justice. If
there are too many conscientious tax objectors, accommodating them might mean
the state will not receive sufficient tax revenues to implement social justice. This
objection allows that there are moral reasons for accommodating tax objectors,
but holds these reasons are overridden by other considerations.
In this section, I respond to two worries regarding the sincerity of tax objection.
First, one might worry that accommodating tax objection will encourage many
citizens to pretend to be conscientious objectors, since it is in their self-interest
to preserve their income. Second, one might worry that the costs to the state of
testing sincerity are so prohibitive that it will be impossible for the liberal state
to implement this policy.
Regarding the first difficulty: It is true that any policy permitting people to
avoid certain costs from government action will induce cheating. Still, one can
make the same argument against conscientious objection to war during conscription. Finding accurate numbers is difficult, but it appears that the percentage and
absolute number of people who apply for conscientious objector status during
wars is small. Selfish cheaters presumably care more about saving their lives
than about saving their purses.24 Conscripts typically comply with drafts rather
than pretend to be conscientious objectors. Presumably, this is evidence that most
people will pay their taxes rather than pretend to be conscientious tax objectors.

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We have not seen conscientious objection crippling the military in most countries
during drafts.
To be frank, there are far more economical and effective ways of avoiding
taxes than by pretending to be a conscientious tax objector: tax shelters, false
deductions, under-reporting income, etc. Also, since the states form of accommodation in many cases will be to require objectors to give comparable funds
to private charities, false objectors might not be saving any income through
successful lying.
The state can help prevent insincere applications by making the process of
obtaining conscientious tax objector status difficult, as it is with obtaining conscientious war objector status. For instance, the objector might provide convincing
evidence of her beliefs, usually from written statements, testimony from those that
know her, and an interview before a review board. A well-designed system will
make achieving conscientious tax objector status difficult enough to discourage
many disingenuous applicants, but not so difficult that genuine applicants have
no chance of success or choose not to apply because the costs are prohibitive.
Regarding the second difficulty, concerning the cost to the state of determining authentic objections: By making the process of applying for conscientious
tax objector status difficult, the state might lower its absolute costs (though it
increases its costs per applicant) by discouraging insincere applications. Also,
consider that many legitimate conscientious tax objectors are likely to pursue tax
avoision over pursuing tax objector status. Thus, not all genuine objectors will
apply for the status. However, suppose there are still a large number of genuine
applicants. It may be expensive to consider their applications, but is not likely
to be prohibitively expensive, as compared to administering criminal justice,
running a military, providing health care, and so on. Reviewing conscientious
tax objection applications would be a small item on the social democratic states
budget. More pressing, perhaps, is the question about whether allowing reduced
taxes or allowing taxes to be targeted to different social programs means the
state loses the funding it needs to pursue all complete social justice. I consider
this issue next.

7. What If Social Justice Cannot Be Achieved?

Another objection to my argument is that if the state accommodates too many
tax objectors, it might lack the revenue to achieve full social justice. Therefore,
we do have a special reason not to accommodate tax objection even though we
should accommodate war objection.
I have argued that the state should tolerate genuine conscientious refusal (as
opposed to mere disagreement), provided permitting the refusal does not violate
others rights, or create so much instability that order breaks down. Presumably this will not be a problem when there are few conscientious tax objectors.

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155

However, imagine a society in which everyone advocates Rawlss principles of

justice. Seventy percent of them believe (correctly, I have stipulated) that the
correct institutional realization of those principles under non-ideal conditions
is a form of social democracy. The other thirty percent are Rawlsian libertarian
tax objectors, people who believe, contrary to Rawls, that Rawlsian principles of
justice are only realized in a libertarian state.25 Suppose that if the state were to
accommodate all tax objectors, it would not have enough tax revenue to achieve
full social justice. Basic rights would be protected and enjoyed at adequate levels.
There would be adequate levels of opportunity and welfare for all. However, the
difference principle and fair equality of opportunity would not be satisfied, though
the departures from these principles would not be extreme. The state would be
fairly just, but not fully just. In contrast, if the state were to force the resisters to
pay the taxes they ought to pay, full substantive social justice would be achieved.
Under these conditions, should the state force them to pay? I think it should not.
First, it is unclear that the objection we are considering shows anything special
about tax resistance. Consider a parallel case. Suppose that society A is perfectly
just and society B is fairly, but imperfectly, just. B protects the equal basic liberties, but allows more inequality than is acceptable under the difference principle
or fair equality of opportunity. Society B unjustly decides it will conquer A and
impose upon A the same basic structure as found in B. If unopposed, B will do so
without raping, pillaging, or killing any civilians. Suppose everyone in A knows
what will happen if B is unopposed. Now, suppose A can defend itself against B
only by holding a massive draft. However, suppose that a large percentage the
inhabitants of A are conscientious objectors to the war. If A accommodates them
all, it will not be able to fight and must surrender. As a result, B will conquer A.
It will do so, in fact, without bloodshed or the destruction of any property. Society A will go from being perfectly just to being only mostly just. On the other
hand, if A forces all of the objectors to fight, it will succeed against B, though
at the cost of many deaths and of forcing a large percentage of its population to
perform unconscionable acts. In this case, my intuition is that A is not permitted
to force the conscientious objectors to fight, even though this means A will stop
being fully just and instead will become only fairly just.
On the other hand, if A were being threatened by a murderous outlaw regime
C, there would be much better reasons for forcing the conscientious objectors
in A to fight. If C wins, the citizens of A will be subject to continual brutality,
poverty, and the trampling of their rights.
The case of B conquering A parallels the case of a society in which there are so
many tax objectors that accommodating tax objection prevents the society from
being perfectly just and instead reduces it to being only fairly just. Conscientious
objection must be tolerated in both or neither.26
Rawlss The Law of Peoples is a theory describing relationships between generally homogenous societies. In The Law of Peoples, Rawls claims we are not

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permitted to interfere with decent hierarchical peoples to force them to rearrange

their unjust basic structures. What about in domestic cases? A society in which a
large percentage of people find compliance with the institutions unconscionable
is not itself quite a people, but more like two peoples.27 Demanding the libertarian
minority acquiesce to the social democratic majority means demanding that the
majority perspective be imposed on the minority. In a society marked by such
a deep split over the proper way to implement justice, imposing the institutions
of justice is less like normal democratic procedure and more like a foreign body
intervening to impose a regime on a people. On Rawlss view, such intervention
is permissible to protect a special class of urgent rights, such as the rights to
life, personal liberty, personal property, and equal treatment under the law.28 This
reasoning should extend to the domestic case when the polity is deeply divided.
When a society is deeply divided over the proper way to implement justice, the
government has the right to implement enough justice to make sure the state is
a decent rather than an outlaw state, but perhaps lacks the right to implement
enough justice to be a substantively just state.
In some ways, the worry expressed here is merely hypothetical. In real life, if
there existed a society with a 7030 percent split over which social policies are
conscionable, the society would likely compromise on a conscionable middle
ground through the political process. It is unlikely that the social democratic
majority would be able or willing to impose its favored institutions on the minority. It would not wish to see 30 percent of the population acting as conscientious
objectors, nor would it wish to coerce them to comply, even for the sake of full
substantive social justice. Rather, we would probably see a compromise position
between the social democracy the majority favors and the liberal capitalist position
the minority favors. Since the citizens are all reasonable, they would likely seek
institutions with which all are willing to comply, because they desire to govern
together and to give everyone subject to coercion a stake in their society.
In an earlier section, I argued that states should accommodate conscientious
objectors, but not when such accommodation itself violates other citizens
rights. One might object to my argument in this section as follows: If the state
accommodates a large percentage of libertarian tax objectors, then it may lack
the revenue sufficient to respect citizens basic rights. After all, on the correct
theory of justice, it may turn out that that citizens not only have negative rights
rights against certain kinds of interferencebut also positive rightsrights to
be provided with certain goods and forms of assistance from the state. Thus,
if citizens have such positive rights, it may turn out that accommodating tax
resistance violates their rights.
One possible response to this objection would be to argue, again following
Rawls in The Law of Peoples, that not all rights are the same. There is a special
class of urgent rightsrights to life, personal liberty, personal property, and
equal treatment under the lawwhich the state must satisfy, even if that means

STATE MUST ACCOMMODATE TAX RESISTERS

157

coercing conscientious tax resisters into compliance.29 (Rawls thinks it is permissible for a just state to intervene in a foreign state to protect these urgent
rights, but not to protect all rights.) Perhaps some other rights are less urgent,
and so perhaps the state may accommodate tax resisters even at the expense
of these rights. This response modifies the first principle of accommodation
I described in section 4 above. There, I argued that the state should tolerate
genuine conscientious refusal (as opposed to mere disagreement) provided
tolerating the refusal does not violate others rights or cause the social order
to collapse. The response we are now considering would modify this principle
to say that the state should tolerate genuine conscientious refusal provided that
it does not violate others urgent rights.
However, another response would just be to accept the objection. If citizens
have (morally basic, rather than merely legal) positive rights to state assistance,
and if accommodating tax resisters is impossible without violating these rights,
then the tax resisters ought not to be accommodated.
I do not think this second response would make it so that the liberal state rarely
had to accommodate tax resisters. We need to keep in mind that even if the correct
theory of social justice, whatever that is, requires that citizens obtain a certain level
of welfare or income, it does not automatically follow that citizens have a right to
that level. For instance, on Rawlss theory of justice, the Difference Principle must
be satisfied in order for a society to qualify as fully just. (The Difference Principle
requires that inequalities in holdings be to the maximal advantage of the representative member of the least advantaged contributing group.) However, on Rawlss
theory, citizens do not have a right to have the Difference Principle satisfied
satisfying the Difference Principle is not among the basic rights Rawls specifies
in his first principle of justice. Satisfying the Difference Principle is right (morally
correct and obligatory), but is not anyones right. Instead, on Rawlss theory, citizens
have positive rights to welfare only up to level needed to ensure the fair value of
their basic liberties. Thus, on Rawlss theory, and other theories like his, it may be
that the state needs less revenue to satisfy citizens positive rights than it needs to
satisfy full social justice. If so, then there may be plenty of room to accommodate
tax resistance without that resulting in positive rights violations.

8. Conclusion
There are good grounds for tolerating conscientious objection to war, even when
such toleration means that certain goals of justice will not be achieved. Surprisingly, we have the same sorts of reasons for tolerating conscientious objection to
taxation. Presumably, since tax resistance appears to be among the least tolerable
sorts of resistance, this means that we have good grounds for tolerating conscientious resistance for a large range of cases between fighting a way and paying a
tax. The argument presented here did not rely upon conscientious objection being

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right. Perhaps Tea Party tax resisters are all wrong; perhaps many of them are
even, as they are commonly portrayed, ignorant or irrational. Even if so, there
are good grounds for accommodating them.
Georgetown University

NOTES
1. Carl Cohen, Conscientious Objection, Ethics, vol. 78, no. 4 (1968), pp. 269279;
p. 276.
2. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1971), p. 368.
3. For instance, she might be bothered by news items such as this Washington Post
article, which claims that the lawmakers who oversee regulations on different industries disproportionately have high investments in those very industries. See http://www
.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/13/AR2010061304881_2.html
?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010061304930.
4. Note that I am not defending so-called tax protestors in the United States,
who believe that income tax laws are not real laws, are unconstitutional, or that income
taxes are in some way voluntary. These people dispute the legality of the laws, but are
not conscientious objectors to taxation. They are simply mistaken about the law. Rather,
the libertarian I have in mind here believes that the laws do in fact require her to pay the
taxes she is refusing to pay.
5. See Rawlss discussion of the natural duty to obey the law in Theory of Justice, p.
344. For a criticism of this purported duty, see Christopher Heath Wellman and A. John
Simmons, Is There a Duty to Obey the Law? (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2005), pp. 155166.
6. More precisely, she believes compliance is more unjust than non-compliance.
We might be able to construct pessimistic scenarios under which the best available law
is deeply unjust, but not as deeply unjust as other possible laws. In this case, perhaps
citizens should be compelled to comply with known-to-be unjust laws.
7. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this point.
8. For an extended defense of this claim, see Cass Sunstein, Why Societies Need
Dissent (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).
9. For the sake of argument, we are assuming that the conscientious objectors in
question are mistakenthey are obligated to comply. However, even though dissent is
sometimes or even often mistaken, having states disposed to accommodate certain kinds
of dissent will in turn make the states less likely, on the whole, to act badly.
10. Cohen, Conscientious Objection, p. 269.
11. Ibid.
12. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 383.

STATE MUST ACCOMMODATE TAX RESISTERS

159

13. Cohen, Conscientious Objection, p. 270.

14. Peter Suber, Civil Disobedience, in Philosophy of Law: An Encyclopedia, Vol.
2, ed. Christopher B. Gray (New York: Garland, 1999), p. 110.
15. Suber says: A. G. Muste argued that to use legal channels to fight unjust laws is
to participate in an evil machine, and to disguise dissent as conformity. This in turn corrupts the activist and discourages others by leading them to underestimate the number of
their congeners. Civil Disobedience, p. 111.
16. James F. Childress, Appeals to Conscience, Ethics, vol. 89, no. 4 (1979), pp.
315335; p. 332.
17. Ibid., p. 333.
18. Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, in Social and Political Philosophy, ed. John Somerville and Ronald E. Santoni (New York: Anchor Books,
1963), pp. 282301; p. 288.
19. Participating at all in the economy of an unjust state will often indirectly benefit
that state. Some will regard this as a reason to retreat from society, much as Thoreau tried
to do. However, we cannot demand such self-induced exile or hermitage from the tax
objector as proof of authenticity, because the costs might be too high for her to bear.
20. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 372. Rawls says one reason for this is that it is difficult
to check the appeal of self-interest, but we have already covered this objection.
21. There is some tension here with Rawlss view that these matters should be settled
democratically. Why think that voters can be secure enough in their knowledge about
social justice to justifiably vote for change, but never secure enough to know that social
justice is so greatly violated that they ought to resist?
22. Thoreau, On the Duty, p. 290.
23. Rawls, Theory of Justice, p. 382.
24. However, perhaps people tend to be caught by pro-war hysteria, and this counteracts
their self-interest.
25. For example, see John Tomasi, Market Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2011).
26. If anything, there might be stronger reasons to force people to fight than to pay
taxes. One might argue that national sovereignty and self-determination are additional
important political values at stake in the case of Bs invasion but not at stake when there
are many tax objectors.
27. Reviewing Rawls, Charles Beitz says, Peoples are societies with a distinctive form
of social unity, expressed in ... common sympathies ... [a common] moral nature.
Charles Beitz, Rawlss Law of Peoples, Ethics, vol. 110, no. 4 (2000), pp. 669696; p.
679. So, at first glance, the society I have described is a people due to its common moral
outlook, but it is marked by a kind of internal diversity in the implementation of that
outlook. They are split on empirical matters rather than moral ones.
28. Rawls, Law of Peoples, pp. 7981; Beitz, Rawlss Law of Peoples, pp. 683684.
29. Ibid.