Taxation Without a State: Jewish Voluntary Taxes in Mandatory Palestine, 1938-1948

50 Pages Posted: 11 Jan 2012

See all articles by Assaf Likhovski

Assaf Likhovski

Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law

Date Written: January 11, 2012

Abstract

In the late 1930s and 1940s, the Jews of British-ruled Palestine established an informal system of direct and indirect taxation. This system, which raised large amounts of money, was similar in some senses to a charity and in other senses to a governmental tax system. This paper provides an outline of the history of this system and some of its unique characteristics (such as the absence of formal rules of taxation and tribunals for the adjudication of disputes, the participatory nature of the system, the use of tax publicity or the role of this system in constructing a notion of Jewish “citizenship.”) While the system discussed in the paper was the result of the unique context of Palestine in the 1940s, a context which no longer exists, the history of this system is still relevant today. This history can be used theoretically to rethink some of our assumptions about the role of formal law (and other types of governmental techniques of control) by modern states, and the appropriate balance between civic rights and civic duties. It may also be relevant practically, by pointing to the utility of the use of civil society organizations in the process of tax collection and the disadvantages of tax privacy.

Keywords: tax, tax history, legal history, legal pluralism, legal formalism, tax law, social norms, comparative law, tax culture, tax morale, tax compliance, tax evasion

JEL Classification: N00, N15, N45, E62,H24, H26, K34

Suggested Citation

Likhovski, Assaf, Taxation Without a State: Jewish Voluntary Taxes in Mandatory Palestine, 1938-1948 (January 11, 2012). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1983331 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1983331

Assaf Likhovski (Contact Author)

Tel Aviv University - Buchmann Faculty of Law ( email )

Ramat Aviv
Tel Aviv 69978
Israel
+972-3-6406381 (Phone)

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
149
Abstract Views
2,031
Rank
354,722
PlumX Metrics