Divine Principles of Taxation and Government Finance

Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience' sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour.

(Romans 13:5-7)

Because governors are God's ministers who are raised up by Him, God has ordained that they are to receive payment from their citizens in the form of taxes for the purposes of conducting government affairs. The above passage clearly reveals that particular truth to us.

The Lord Jesus Himself also paid taxes when He was on earth, although He taught the disciples that our motivation for paying taxes is different from the people of this world. Our Lord taught that although the citizens of this world are required to pay taxes, the saints, on the other hand, as sons of God, are exempt from paying taxes to His ministers. Nevertheless, our Lord went on to say that we still pay taxes, but the reason we do so is so that we do not offend the people of this world (Matthew 17:24-27).

Obviously, word got out about what our Lord taught His disciples on this subject, but because those in the world did not understand His teaching, they erroneously assumed that He was encouraging people not to pay tax. Therefore, they thought that if they could get Him to make that statement in public, they would then have grounds to accuse Him before the Roman Governor of encouraging the Jews not to pay taxes to Caesar.

They tried to entrap Him by publicly asking Him if it was lawful for Jews to pay tax to Caesar or not. Jesus obviously knew their hypocrisy and answered them by telling them to render to Caesar that which is Caesar's (Matthew 22:15-22). Nevertheless, the Jews continued to believe the lie that Jesus encouraged people not to pay tax, and so when they finally handed Him over to Pilate to be crucified, one of their accusations against Him was that He was trying to pervert the nation by forbidding the Jews to pay taxes to Caesar (Luke 23:2).

Then Joseph said to the people, "Indeed I have bought you and your land this day for Pharaoh. Look, here is seed for you, and you shall sow the land. And it shall come to pass in the harvest that you shall give one-fifth to Pharaoh. Four-fifths shall be your own, as seed for the field and for your food, for those of your households and as food for your little ones."

(Genesis 47:23-24)

Although God ordains His ministers to receive payment for the government services they provide, He does not condone excessive taxation of a nation's citizens. In the above passage, God gives us an indication as to what level of taxation He deems adequate. God is the one who gave Joseph wisdom and understanding to govern the nation of Egypt, and so we see in this passage that the level of taxation God deems sufficient to finance a nation's government is one-fifth, or twenty percent, of their citizens' income. When Joseph instituted that level of taxation in Egypt, that nation prospered.

Nations that tax their citizens at this level will receive blessing from God and have more than enough to cover the costs incurred in governing their nations. However, nations that choose to tax their citizens excessively—substantially more than twenty percent—will not experience the blessing of God and will begin to experience problems in their economies. The reason for that is because greed begins to take control of those governments as they work to appropriate more and more of a nation's wealth for themselves.

Surprisingly, that was one of the traps that King Solomon fell into, for toward the end of his reign he began to place an undue burden on the Jewish population through excessive taxes. At the end of his reign, when his son Rehoboam ascended to the throne in his place, the citizens of Israel approached Rehoboam to ask him to ease his father's excessive tax burden placed on the nation. Rehoboam refused to listen to them, however, and actually threatened to increase their taxes.

As a result, ten of the tribes of Israel chose to secede from the nation rather than continue paying the excessive taxes imposed upon them. When Rehoboam tried to enforce his taxation on those states, they responded by killing his finance minister and forcing King Rehoboam to flee for his life to the capital city of Jerusalem. The nation then came to the brink of civil war as King Rehoboam tried to enforce his authority militarily, but God intervened and prevented him from doing so.

The final outcome of that episode was that the nation was split into two from that point onward: Israel and Judah (1 Kings 12:1-19). Clearly, God does not condone excessive taxation and will eventually replace governments that choose that path, for it leads them to become more and more corrupt over time.

Michael E.B. Maher

The Church and the State

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