Following up on this morning’s post:  Pope Benedict to Condemn Tax Evasion:  Rick Garnett (Notre Dame) notes on the Catholic legal theory blog Mirror of Justice:

I hope this document attends carefully to the non-trivial challenge of defining "tax evasion." I hope it does not suggest that there is a general moral obligation to avoid actions that "reduce[] tax revenues for the benefit of society as a whole." (The issue, it seems to me, in "tax evasion" should be law-breaking.) And, I hope it at least acknowledges the possibilty that some tax policies that are motivated by a desire or packaged as efforts to raise "revenues for the benefit of society as a whole" can in fact reduce both social welfare and the well being of the poor. (The piece above notes that "tax evasion" is making it difficult to "plug Italy’s huge budget deficit." I hope, then, that the document will at least suggest the possibility that waste and overspending by the state raises moral questions, too.)