[throwawaycuriou]

Stepping sideways from the multinational revelations of the Pandora Papers, as a US citizen I'm floored by how much tax abuse comes from organized religion and how little we seem to be concerned by it.

I've considered creating my own church for along the same reasoning you describe. If I can make a Mary Mag Was Actually Jesus Church with minimal effort, and the end result is I get to play the same game that corrupt ministers do, shouldn't I ethically do so? There's good and bad about it, and I leaned towards no. But maybe the problem is it's unethical if too few people do it. If I scale it up, does it become ethically different?

Say TurboTax starts providing any Joe Schmoe the chance to click a few buttons and handle all the hard things to establish his new 'church' is a legally tax-exempt financial vehicle on religious grounds. What would come of it? Would it accelerate the good or bad?

[jokethrowaway]

The issue with mandatory taxation is that the powerful in society will always corrupt the system somehow to pay what they are happy to pay (paying taxes or doing charity can be good investments reputation-wise) while everyone else will have to pay "their fair share".

As soon as everyone start using loopholes they will simply lobby to make it harder, to keep the powerful safe and everyone else paying. From anecdotal evidence, I'm pretty sure the religious route you recommend won't work.

The only way to make things fair in terms of taxes would be to have zero mandatory taxes. With zero taxes there is no-one benefitting from corrupting politicians. Career politicians would not exist anymore because there would be no more money in it.

Without taxes you're left with the problem of organising society without a central entity, eg. by having private police and protection, private healthcare, private education, private roads and by supporting those without means through voluntary charities instead of mandatory taxes.