Advocating for a Just Tax System in 2025

• The Church teaches that governments have the responsibility to promote the common good through ensuring that basic human needs are met in our world.¹ Public authorities also must create mechanisms to provide for the just redistribution of wealth in society.² The collection of taxes allows governments to secure the resources necessary to fulfill these responsibilities.³
• The payment of taxes is a responsibility described in Scripture and in Church teaching.⁴ Since taxation can lead to the crucial assistance of those most in need, Saint John Paul II called paying taxes an act of solidarity.⁵ Pope Francis has stated that tax evasion is an evil which denies “the basic law of life: mutual care.”⁶

• The tax system must “raise adequate revenues to pay for the public needs of society, especially to meet the basic needs of the poor.”⁷ At the same time, taxation should not be so excessive as to drain anyone’s resources in this pursuit. Taxes must be fair.⁸
• Tax burdens, as Saint John XXIII wrote, must “be proportioned to the capacity of the people contributing.”⁹ For example, the US bishops write, families with incomes below the poverty line should be exempt from paying income taxes, and our “tax system should be structured according to the principle of progressivity, so that those with relatively greater financial resources pay a higher rate of taxation.”¹⁰ One of the most glaring violations of the principle of progressivity in our current tax system lies in sales and payroll taxes which “place a disproportionate burden on those with lower incomes.”¹¹
• The tax system should be designed in a way that supports families, farmers, and business practices that strengthen human development.¹²

• As seen above, Catholic social teaching from Pope Leo XIII onwards insists that tax revenues must serve the common good by ensuring basic human needs are met, assisting people in poverty, and securing a more equitable distribution of wealth.
• Governments fulfill these responsibilities by providing access to “food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, suitable information, [and] the right to establish a family,”¹³ by funding “road-building, transportation, communications, drinking-water, housing, medical care, ample facilities for the practice of religion, and aids to recreation,”¹⁴ and by the care of our common home.¹⁵ A special emphasis should be placed on facilitating the flourishing of families.¹⁶
• The popes have also consistently taught that, as members of one human family, we must remember that the duty of wealth redistribution extends beyond our own national borders.¹⁷ As John Paul II wrote, “The disproportionate distribution of wealth and poverty and the existence of some countries and continents that are developed and of others that are not call for a levelling out and for a search for ways to ensure just development for all.”¹⁸

1 Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), no. 1908-1912.

2 Benedict XVI, Caritas in veritate, no. 35-39.

3 Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (RN), 32, 47; Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (CSDC), no. 303, 355.

4 Mt 17:24-27; Mt 22:15-22; Rom 13:6-7; CCC, no. 2240; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, no. 30; Francis, Evangelii gaudium, no. 56.

5 John Paul II, Address of 7 November 1980; see RN, no. 32.

6 Francis, Address of 2 February 2017; see CCC, no. 2409.

7 US Bishops, Economic Justice for All (EJA), no. 202. Emphasis added.

8 RN, no. 47; Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno, 49.

9 John XXIII, Mater at magistra (MM), no. 132.

10 EJA, no. 202. Emphasis added.

11 EJA, no. 202.

12 MM, no. 133; John Paul II, Address of 8 March 1996; US Bishops, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (FCFC), no. 70, 77; EJA, no. 188, 202, 206f, 244c.

13 CCC, no. 1908.

14 John XXIII, Pacem in terris, no. 64.

15 Francis, Laudato si’, no. 38.

16 CSDC, no. 355; FCFC, no. 77; EJA, no. 206f.

17 Paul VI, Populorum progressio, no. 84; Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est, no. 30; Francis, Fratelli tutti, no. 138.

18 John Paul II, Laborem exercens, 2. Emphasis added.