Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

20
Envy as Tax Collector
NEITHER DEMOCRACIES nor dictatorships are averse to depending
upon the supposed mutual envy in the population to produce
maximum honesty in tax matters. It is true that in the United States tax
returns are treated as confidential, but an article that appeared a few
years ago in Time Magazine expressed surprise at the efficiency of the
direct tax system and declared outright that this was due to the mutual
envy of taxpayers, who keep a watch on each other. Something that is
perhaps less well known is the morally dubious procedure of the U. S.
Internal Revenue Service when, every spring, before tax returns are
finally due, it makes known how much it has paid in rewards to informers.
It is not rare to see in the press caricatures or photographs depicting a
clearly ill-intentioned individual looking over a taxpayer's shoulder, with
the caption: 'Be honest; envy is watching you!' On April °1, 1962, just in
time for the April 15 deadline for making the returns, the New York Times
Magazine, for instance, obligingly aided the Internal Revenue Service by
printing a terrifying story about tax informers: 'The tax collectors-volunteer
division,' and a handsomely rewarded one at that. The article
remarked: 'No one is quite sure how many communications the Treasury
receives each year, but educated guesses put the number at 100,000. It is
hard to say what motivates these people. Revenge, envy, anger, patriotism,
spite-all playa part, perhaps a greater part than greed. '
It is notable that a method deliberately counting on envy for the
purpose of tax collection was unblushingly commended in the nineteenth
century-by Jeremy Bentham, for example. Bentham suggested
that the state should evolve the sort of taxation best suited to enlist envy
as an inexpensive watchdog. He had in mind, for instance, the success
and easy collection of a special tax on bankers:
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