The voice on the recording was calm and precise as it delivered a message of horror. “In light of the continuing crimes against our people, in light of the orgy of occupation and its denial of international laws and resolutions, and in light of American and western support, we’ve decided to put an end to all this,” said the speaker, filmed shrouded in shadows, “so that the enemy understands that he can no longer revel without being held to account.”
The voice heard on the video, released within hours of Saturday’s attack on Israel unfolding, purported to belong to Mohammed Deif, commander of the military wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas and mastermind of the incursion into Israel. The mass raid in the early hours of Saturday has so far killed at least 600 people in Israel, left more than 2,000 Israelis injured and taken his decades-long campaign against the Jewish state to a brutal and unpredictable new level.
‘The Guest’: the Palestinian mastermind behind deadly Israel incursion
Israel at war: Hostages taken to Gaza, sirens and explosions continue as night falls
Limor Riza (Ono Academic College; Google Scholar), Tax Bribes in the Form of Flattering News Coverage, 32 S. Cal. Interdisc. L.J. 441 (2023):
In this Article, I pose the question: Should we tax illegal non-monetary benefits without a direct FMV such as flattering news coverage received by a public official bribe-taker? And if the answer is positive, the derivative question is how we should evaluate these non-monetary benefits. This Article claims that briberies should be taxed differently than any other illegal income.
To understand this question, I refer to a hypothetical case in which a high-ranking public official is accused of bribery while seeking improved coverage from a chief editor of a newspaper, a transaction that does not involve any cash transfer.
I use this case as a prototype to illustrate how public officials can enjoy illegal non-monetary (that is, not just monetary) benefits thanks to their public position. I use this case as a prototype to illustrate how public officials can enjoy illegal non-monetary (that is, not just monetary) benefits thanks to their public position. Flattering a public official with positive news coverage can constitute the crime of bribery, but the transaction does not have a direct market price.
Bribery is an illegal barter transaction, and to answer the question posed above, I first define those nonmonetary benefits and then review the justifications for taxing illegal income. These two layers are valuable for building the argumentation, which is twofold. First, illegal income—whether monetary or non-monetary—given to a public official as such is essentially different from other illegal income and consequently should be taxed more. This reasoning is based on the equity principle, since the bribe-taker’s illegal benefit can be derived by virtue of his or her position as a public official using public resources that are not available to other individuals.
This unique usage of public resources justifies an additional tax liability, resting on the benefit principle that can take the form of a special “political” surtax. My second claim is that the default rule for weighing the non-monetary benefit, which does not involve any cash transfer and a direct fair market value, should follow the presumption of equality since bribery is a tit-for-tat barter transaction. This, however, is a rebuttable default rule in cases where the fair market value is not mutually viable for the parties and when the non-monetary bribe has idiosyncratic subjective value.
