Taxes are due even if you object to government policies or doubt the validity of the 16th Amendment’s ratification

Taxes can be tough – to file and to pay. Kameleon007/iStock / Getty Images Plus by Michele Frank, Miami University Most Americans don’t like doing, or paying, their income taxes. But every year, about 85% of them will voluntarily pay the full amount of the taxes they owe. Even so, the IRS estimates that it loses over US$400 billion of revenue each year because people fail to file their taxes, underreport their income or underpay the amount of taxes they owe. Most of these losses are the result of deliberate tax evasion schemes designed to fatten unscrupulous taxpayers’ own pockets. But some people take a less greedy and more principled view: They refuse to file tax returns or pay all of their tax due to moral or ethical concerns. In essence, they view a decision to not pay income taxes as a form of civil disobedience. While the government has not released much data about these people, in the late 1990s, it estimated that 47,000 of them owed approximately $540 million in federal income taxes. As a tax professor and scholar of judgment and decision-making, I categorize people who do not pay taxes due to moral or ethical concerns into...