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When is Tax Avoidance a good thing?

Matthew 22.15-22
The former Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich has at least one thing in common with Jesus. He stands accused, together with his accountants, of tax evasion. Or is it tax avoidance, which is something different?

This passage in the Gospel is one of the controversy stories where Jesus is supposed to have sparred with the Jewish leaders just before his arrest and execution. It's implied by the Gospel writers that the leaders were trying to discredit Jesus or even to build a case against him. They apparently suspect that he might be an advocate of tax avoidance, which would put him on the wrong side of the authorities.

Some Bible historians have questioned whether all of the controversy stories are genuine. In this story, for instance, why would the Pharisees team up with the supporters of King Herod to go up against Jesus? Herod was renowned for his immoral behaviour, whereas the Pharisees made a practice of trying to be on their very best behaviour. 

Not only that, but King Herod actually collected taxes, and spent the proceeds, in Galilee where Jesus had been one of his subjects. So why would his followers be asking Jesus whether or not he was in favour of tax avoidance? It's like the Inland Revenue sending us a questionnaire to find out whether or not we want to pay taxes.

On the other hand, the first Christians were extremely anxious to show that they posed no threat to the Roman Empire. This story seems to prove that Jesus wasn't a troublemaker, which would very much suit their agenda. So did they make it all up?

The members of Herod’s party and the Pharisees at least had this much in common, they paid their taxes. If they're insinuating that good Jewish people shouldn't pay their taxes that would make them hypocrites, as Jesus is quick to point out. But on the other hand they seem reluctant to come straight out and say that taxes are a good thing.

In the story they're probing Jesus to see which side he will come down on. If he says that people shouldn't pay their taxes that would sound seditious and the governor in Jerusalem might have him arrested. If he says that we should always pay our taxes that might make him seem less of a trailblazer than people imagine. He would be no different than the followers of Herod and the Pharisees.

However, Jesus turns the tables on his interrogators by asking them for their opinion. It's like the famous question and answer session in Monty Python's Life of Brian: ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ The answer is that they've provided aqueducts, sanitation, roads, public baths and peace. The film makers could have added coins and a flourishing economy, with lots of building work going on right across Palestine. The followers of Herod and the Pharisees have to concede that if the government is responsible for prosperity and the ready supply of money, the authorities are entitled to receive some of it back in taxation.

For the Gospel writers the story has served its purpose. Jesus is shown to be encouraging the crowd to be law-abiding. He isn't a rebel against authority.

And yet the story isn't as helpful to their cause, at second reading, as the Gospel writers clearly expected. What if the government is doing bad things? Is it the duty of Christians to support the authorities in all circumstances, because they were put there by God and because politics has nothing to do with religion? Is that what Jesus really meant, if the story is genuine? This is what Saint Paul was later to suggest, so he probably knew the story. It was also the view taken by the many Christians who didn't oppose the Nazis in Germany before the Second World War.

But if we look more closely, this isn't quite what Jesus is saying. He says that we only have to give to the government what rightly belongs to it. If the government is doing good things like providing aqueducts and peace, we shouldn't begrudge paying for its services. But we also have to bear in mind our loyalty to give to God what belongs to him, so if the government is acting immorally we have a duty to resist it. 

We are told that the followers of Herod and the Pharisees went away disappointed. They didn't spot the hidden subtlety in Jesus' answer. Perhaps he was, after all, more of a rule breaker than they realised.

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