New Title Forthcoming from SUNY Press -- Tax Cheating: Illegal--But is it Immoral?

For a more complete discription of the book, visit the site below.

Tax Cheating: Illegal--But is it Immoral -- taxcheating.org
The recently completed book, Tax Cheating: Illegal--But is it Immoral? is seeking a publisher.

Contact Donald Morris donmorriscpa@hotmail.com

This is not a how-to book. It is an ethical investigation of tax cheating in the context of the current U.S. Internal Revenue Code. The book is aimed at a growing audience who believe that our tax system is in need of drastic revision. While polls show that 95 percent of Americans believe that they have a civic duty to pay income taxes, more than 20 percent of the taxes due the treasury go unreported or unpaid annually. The book explores the nature and extent of tax cheating through an examination of the meaning of tax cheating and of the moral problem caused by the so-called voluntary tax system. Whether tax cheating is associated with Al Capone, UBS and Swiss bank accounts, or overvaluing the clothing you gave to charity, both the boundaries and moral status of tax cheating remain hazy.

This book is a call to examine the Tax Code’s role in fostering the growing problem of tax cheating. It is not a technical tax or economic treatise but a readable ethical examination of tax cheating and its implications for tax policy. It offers an interdisciplinary analysis of our purported ethical obligation to comply with the current income tax system, combining insights from law, psychology, sociology, economics, and philosophy. From its flawed self-assessment model to its escalating attempts to focus special provisions on ensuring fairness to narrowly defined constituent groups—the Code has long strayed from its constitutional purpose of raising revenue “to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare.” The seriousness of this problem will determine what measures are required to bring taxpaying back within the sphere of moral obligation, by allowing taxpayers to understand how and why the amount they are required to pay is their fair share—not their share and part of someone else's.

This book combines the perspectives of the author’s unique background as a CPA—tax practitioner and professor of accounting (U. of Ill., Springfield) with his training in philosophy (PhD). The completed book is 83,500 words. Each chapter contains a licensed black-and-white cartoon with a color cartoon available for the book cover. The author’s arguments are well documented citing 330 sources in 850 endnotes.


Table of Contents


Chapter One - Tax Cheating—the Problem
• Tax Cheating
• Tax Fairness
• The Meaning of Cheating in Tax
• Tax Fraud
• Penalties and Deterrence
• Tax Penalties—Is the IRS Making it Worse?
• Cheating—Specific Characteristics

Chapter Two - The Tax Gap, Protestors, and Small Business
• The Voluntary Tax System
• The World of Tax Protestors
• The Gaping Tax Gap
• Small Business and the Tax Gap
• The Broken Window of Opportunity

Chapter Three – Tax Complexity
• The Complexity Problem
• Is Complexity to Blame?
• The Moral Problem
• Non-voluntary Taxation
• Complexity and Morals
• Reducing Complexity with Half Measures

Chapter Four – The Moral Duty to Obey the Law
• Morality and Legality
• Ethical Relativism and Absolutism
• The Role of Morality in the Law
• Moral Obedience to the Law
• The Ethics of Tax Evasion
• Consent to Taxation
• Justifying a Moral Duty

Chapter Five - Cheating, Competition, and Fairness
• Cheating and Competition
• Hand-to-Hand Combat
• Fairness and Equality
• Getting What You Pay For
• What If Everyone Cheated?
• The Uneven Playing Field
• The Uneven Bench
• Personalized Tax Rulings

Chapter Six - Unintentional Cheating
• A Fork in the Road
• Fair Share Argument
• Unintended Cheating
• The Meaning of Cheating in Football
• Other Kinds of Cheating

Chapter Seven - The Courts, Equity, and Taxes Due
• Rules and Principles
• The Innocent Spouse Rules
• The U.S. Tax Court
• Equity, Subjectivity and Negligence
• The Bankrupt Taxpayer
• Interpreting the Law—Transparency

Chapter Eight - Enlisting the Conscience
• The Moral Quality of Actions
• Enlisting Conscience in Reducing Tax Cheating
• The Meaning of Conscience
• Conscientious Objectors
• Civil Disobedience


Contact: Donald Morris donmorriscpa@​hotmail.com
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On Tax Cheating
“Our revenue laws as a body might well be entitled, ‘Acts to promote the corruption of public officials, to suppress honesty and encourage fraud, to set a premium upon perjury and the subornation of perjury, and to divorce the idea of law from the idea of justice.’”
– Henry George (American political economist, 1839-1897)



“The strongest objection, however, to raising the whole or the greater part of a large revenue by direct taxes, is the impossibility of assessing them fairly without a conscientious co-operation on the part of the contributors, not to be hoped for in the present low state of public morality.” — John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)



“Every man, to be sure, is desirous of pushing off from himself the burden of any tax, which is imposed, and of laying it upon others: But as every man has the same inclination, and is upon the defensive, no set of men can be supposed to prevail altogether in this contest.”
– David Hume (1711-1776)



“The whole practice of public finance has been developed in an endeavor to outwit the taxpayer and to induce him to pay more than he is aware of, and to make him agree to expenditure in the belief that somebody else will be made to pay for it.” — Friedrich Hayek (Austrian economist— 1899-1992)



“But the most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary. They are commonly converted, by their management, into punishments on industry; and also, by their unavoidable inequality, are more grievous, than by the real burden which they impose.”
– David Hume (1711-1776)