Ruth Braunstein is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where she studies religion, politics, and money and directs the Meanings of Democracy Lab. She is the the host of the new documentary podcast When The Wolves Came: Evangelicals Resisting Extremism, and the author of My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America, which delves into how paying taxes became a moral battleground in public life. Dr. Braunstein’s award-winning research has appeared in top scholarly journals and been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Time Magazine. She also writes op-eds for publications including The Guardian, Religion News Service and The Conversation. Here I ask about My Tax Dollars: The Morality of Taxpaying in America. You can find Ruth on Bluesky @ruthbraunstein.bsky.social and at https://www.ruthbraunstein.com.

AMW: Much of the public debate around taxes focuses on policy (rates, deductions, fairness). But My Tax Dollars shifts the focus to culture and meaning-making. What do you think we miss, politically or socially, when we overlook the emotional and moral dimensions of taxation?

RB: In doing research for this book, I spent a lot of time reading about the history of the antitax movement in the United States. This is a movement that has grown in size and intensity over the past century. And yet, over that same time period, the highest marginal tax rate has *declined*—from a peak of more than 90% to around 37% today. So if we think this movement is just about tax rates (and other technical nuts and bolts of tax policy), we are missing something more fundamental about what drives their concerns. 

When I went looking for those deeper answers, I heard a lot about the form that the income tax exchange takes. Essentially, the idea that most individuals are required to chip in a portion of what they earn each year; that the more they earn, the more they owe (which is the basis of a progressive tax system); that all of these “tax dollars” go into a big pot controlled by the federal government; and that this pot of money is then used to fund the myriad programs and services that Congress includes in the federal budget each year. 

This approach to taxation raises a number of concerns among antitax groups. Some people don’t like the idea that individuals would not have complete control over the “fruits of their labor.” Some would be comfortable donating the same portion of their money to a church or charitable organization, but not to the government. Some focus on the progressive nature of the federal income tax, which they view as unfairly punishing hardworking people while rewarding those who choose not to work. 

When we take these arguments seriously, we see that it hardly matters how much one’s tax bill is at the end of the year. What matters is that the current tax system embeds Americans in political relationships (with their government and with their fellow citizens) that are inconsistent with some people’s understanding of how those relationships should be structured. 

So a central theme that runs through the book is that we need to be attuned to how different tax arrangements imply different kinds of political relationships; how our perceptions of these relationships actually vary significantly and are contested; and how different groups respond when taxation presents them with a “relational mismatch.” My hope is that by being attuned to these questions, we can have more constructive public conversations about what we hope to achieve together as a society, and about the tradeoffs of varied fiscal strategies for achieving those ends. 

AMW: You write about the sacred and profane meanings people attach to how their tax dollars are used. How do those meanings play out when it comes to funding programs for families, like public education, childcare, or parental leave?

RB: So as I mentioned, many Americans are focused on the form that taxation takes. But many are also focused on the uses of their tax dollars. In large part, this is because Americans across the political spectrum tend to think of public revenues not as something we share collectively, but as aggregations of their personal tax dollars. 

This means that at the very least, they want to feel like they getting good value for their money, much as they would when they make an investment or a consumer purchase. In addition, many Americans also assess whether the ways their tax dollars are being spent aligns with their values. This assessment often involves fixating on a few specific uses of tax dollars that are perceived as morally concerning, or even as profane threats to one’s vision of what is sacred. 

So what does this mean for the many funding programs that would benefit American families, like public education, childcare, or paid parental leave. We know that large shares of Americans either currently do or would benefit personally from these programs. Put differently, the programs offer high value for one’s money, especially as the costs of raising families increases. In this light, it seems perplexing that these programs would be controversial. Especially in a moment when the Trump administration is publicly lamenting low birthrates and supporting the “pronatalist” cause, it seems counterintuitive to also be defunding public education and dismantling programs that help people build families.  

The approach I propose offers an answer to this puzzle. It directs us to consider how these policies, which provide empirically good value to many Americans, are also viewed by some Americans (and the elites and movements that speak for them) as undermining their values. Public education, which religious conservatives often refer to disparagingly as “government schools,” are viewed by many on the Right as promoters of secular values and knowledge that challenge white Christian privilege in society. Publicly funded or subsidized childcare gets the same bad rap. And, along with policies like parental leave, it is viewed by some on the Right as encouraging women to abandon of their “proper” role in society, which is to be mothers and caretakers of children. 

When conservatives argue these programs are simply too expensive, that is not the whole (or perhaps even the real) story. If we accept such arguments on their face, we will never have a real conversation about what we value as a society, and what we don’t; what kinds of families we want to support, and under what conditions. People are entitled to different opinions on these big questions—but our leaders also have a responsibility to speak clearly about them so citizens can make informed decisions about who will represent their best interests.

AMW: You write about very different groups—antiwar activists, tax defiers, antiabortion protesters—who all claim moral authority over “my tax dollars.” How do these competing claims shape the legitimacy of government and civic belonging in today’s polarized political climate?

RB: One of the background themes of the book is that the United States is a country marked by profound diversity, deep political polarization, and also an individualistic streak. Given all of this, it is an actual marvel that we manage to have a functioning tax system and to pass a federal budget every year. Like truly, we should recognize this as a profound accomplishment of our pluralistic democracy. 

Even more astonishing is that Americans have famously high “tax morale,” which translates into extremely high levels of voluntary compliance with the tax system. This reflects a widespread understanding that part of the deal of living in a country like this is that, as individuals, we are never going to agree with every single thing that our tax dollars are spent on. As long as the process is viewed as legitimate, and is responsive to citizens’ input through mechanisms like elections and advocacy and, yes, even antitax protest, most Americans are willing to accept their responsibilities as taxpayers.  

But we are living in a precarious moment, and the delicate balance we have managed to strike on this issue could easily be knocked off-kilter. The activist groups I write about in this book all shape our public debates about taxation. But they do not all represent the same degree of threat to the viability of this system. 

Antiwar activists, for example, employ one of the most radical tactics I write about in the book: they publicly refuse to pay the taxes that they owe. But, they do this as a form of civil disobedience intended to display their moral opposition to war, not because they believe the tax system is illegitimate. In this sense, their tactics are radical, but their position toward the tax system is not and does not represent a major threat to its legitimacy.

On the other hand, the current presidential administration and many elected members of Congress may appear to be promoting the relatively mainstream goal of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government by cutting wasteful spending. But in reality, they are implementing a far-right antigovernment playbook that was developed over the past century by activists operating at the radical fringes of American politics. 

Within only the first few months of this administration, they have dealt blow after blow to the legitimacy of the tax system: they have promoted conspiracy theories about the IRS that paint the underfunded agency as an armed and dangerous shadow army of the deep state. Ironically, it is the administration itself that has recently breached the privacy of taxpayers’ data and is using that data to surveil and punish those they view as enemies. Meanwhile, they have made cuts to the IRS that will decimate its capacity to collect unpaid taxes, especially from the super rich. This naturally undermines ordinary people’s sense that everyone is paying their fair share, a key condition on which people are willing to pay their own share. 

Each of these alone would raise concerns about the ongoing legitimacy of the tax system; together, they could be catastrophic. Whether or not one likes to pay taxes or has different spending priorities, the implications of these attacks should be chilling. Without a functioning tax system, we would lack sufficient revenues to fund even the most basic functions of government, including the military. We would not be able to pay our debt, or raise more funds. Even if we had a well-designed tariff system that could generate some revenue (which we do not), relying exclusively on this as the president has proposed would make us wholly financially dependent on foreign countries. 

We have reached this moment, in part, because Americans have settled for an impoverished conversation about taxation, one that reduces all tax questions to tax rates, and paints one party as wanting to lower them and the other as wanting to raise them. This conversation has convinced large swaths of Americans that these attacks on the tax system are being done in their best interest, or at least in the interest of lower taxes. But at what cost? We need a conversation that involves a much fuller accounting of what is at stake. 

Alicia M. Walker is Associate Professor of Sociology at Missouri State University and the author of two previous books on infidelity, and a forthcoming book, Bound by BDSM: What Practitioners can teach Everyone about Building a Happier Life (Bloomsbury Fall 2025) coauthored with Arielle Kuperberg. She is the current Editor in Chief of the Council of Contemporary Families blog, serves as Senior Fellow with CCF, and serves as Co-Chair of CCF alongside Arielle Kuperberg. Learn more about her on her website. Follow her on Twitter or Bluesky at @AliciaMWalker1, Facebook, and Instagram @aliciamwalkerphd