Ruth Braunstein, "My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America" (Princeton UP, 2025)

May 9, 2025

Ruth Braunstein, an Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, delves into the moral complexities of taxpaying in America. She shares stories of tax defiers, antiwar activists, and those who advocate for taxation as a civic duty. Braunstein compares taxation to sacred rituals, exploring how collective beliefs shape taxpayer perceptions. The podcast highlights the emotional weight of taxes, contrasting individual vs. collective taxpayer experiences and the ongoing debates around tax morality. A thought-provoking discussion on civic responsibility and societal values!

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ANECDOTE

Three Groups in Tax Debate

Braunstein interviewed anti-war activists, anti-abortion activists, and anti-government anti-tax protestors.
These groups articulate strong moral debates about the meaning of taxpaying and tax resistance.

INSIGHT

High Compliance and Protest Coexist

Americans combine high tax compliance with long-standing tax protest traditions.
The tax system is simultaneously a site of legal obligation, trust, punishment, and democratic input.

INSIGHT

Taxation as Social Contract

Taxation embodies the material social contract shaping citizen-state and citizen-citizen relationships.
Tax debates are proxy battles over collective values amid individualism and diversity in the U.S.

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In My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America (Princeton University Press, 2025), Ruth Braunstein maps the contested moral landscape in which Americans experience and make sense of the tax system. Braunstein tells the stories of Americans who view taxpaying as more than a mundane chore: antigovernment tax defiers who challenge the legitimacy of the tax system, antiwar activists who resist the use of their taxes to fund war, antiabortion activists against “taxpayer funded abortions,” and a diverse group of people who promote taxpaying as a moral good.

Though taxpaying is often portrayed as dull and technical, exposure to collective rituals, civic education, propaganda, and protest transforms the practice for many Americans into either a sacred rite of citizenship or a profane threat to what they hold dear. These sacred and profane meanings can apply to the act of taxpaying itself or to the specific uses of tax dollars. Despite intense disagreement about these meanings, politically diverse Americans engaged in both taxpaying and tax resistance valorize the individual taxpayer and “my tax dollars.”
Braunstein explores the profound implications of this meaning making for tax consent, the legitimacy of the tax system, and citizens’ broader understandings of their political relationships. Going beyond the usual focus on tax policy, Braunstein’s innovative view of taxation through the lens of cultural sociology shows how citizens in value-diverse societies coalesce around shared visions of the sacred and fears of the profane.

Interviewee: Ruth Braunstein is Associate Professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (Temple University Press). Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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