Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Many Muslims in the US are self-employed. They under-report their real earnings on their income tax returns so that they have to pay less taxes. They justify this by saying that they don’t approve of how their tax dollars are spent. They also use the lower earnings to qualify for government aide in housing, food, medical, etc, in effect “stealing” money from the other tax payers. My understanding is that this is lying and that we must obey the laws of the country we live in. Is what they are doing permitted or prohibited Islamically?
Walaikum assalam wa rahmatullah,
I asked Mufti Rafi Usmani about this directly last Summer. His answer was that it is our duty as Muslims to obey the law of the land that we are in, and that doing so is a covenant we enter into–explicitly or implicitly–when we enter any land.
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And Allah alone gives success.
Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani