Dear Linda:

Thanks for the clarifications, but it does not change my previous answer much.

I presume what is meant by "voluntary" taxes, are taxes paid on income that one choose to earn that is sufficient enough that payment of taxes is required.

As I mentioned, one can voluntarily live in below the line in which taxes must be paid.

My opinion about whether or not this person is really doing that, or understands what poverty really is, remains as there is no one I have ever met who is truly poor who could save sufficient money to buy land or build a house (even if he did his own labor). Saving money and true poverty is essentially an oxymoron. One can have a low income, by the way, without being in poverty.

What is not my opinion is the possible criminal activity of evading taxes by working for cash "under the table." If I remember correctly, if a person makes more than $400 in cash income, it must be reported to the IRS. If this is self-employed income, then self-employment taxes must be paid.

According to your narrative, you said that he doesn't give receipts and such which shows a pre-meditation to commit the crime of evading taxes.

Thus, it is not quite true, based upon the information given, that he would pay taxes if he is required to pay them. He is required to report cash income over $400 (I think it is) and pay any applicable taxes. This is not voluntary, but required.

As for the government supporting abortion outweighing all the other benefits, one of the central tenets of Christianity is that the "ends do not justify the means." The "end" of protesting abortion, which it is in itself a good thing, cannot be justified by the "means" of doing things that deprive children and needy people of their lives, or cancer patients of a cure. That is not a good thing. It is nonsense to suggest that all that is outweighed by the government's support of abortion as a justification to not pay taxes. This is a a real "thinking error" and I might add a violation of Church teaching which states that, "Submission to authority and co-responsibility for the common good make it morally obligatory to pay taxes..." and even when the government oversteps its bounds we are "not refuse to give or to do what is objectively demanded of [us] by the common good."

I can't believe I am arguing in favor of taxes :) I use to be a tax protester myself 25 years ago and I paid a penalty for it even though my income was so low that I did not have to actually pay any taxes--I was fined $1000.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary