My wife doesn’t work, and she depends on me financially. This is an agreement we’ve had for years, and it works well for both of us. We live comfortably but on a tight monthly budget.
When I met her 10 years ago, she didn’t smoke. I knew she had smoked before, but she assured me that she had stopped entirely. Some months ago, though, she started smoking again. We talked about it, and I told her my position was that, obviously, she was free to smoke, as long as she did so outside the house, and that the money for her cigarettes would not be included in our budget planning. She would somehow have to find the money somewhere else. I think her smoking is terrible for us as a family since it increases the chances of her getting sick, and I don’t want to have anything to do with that.
But it’s clear that she resents my position. I have never said no to something she has asked for, and this is creating a division between us. Should I pay for my wife’s cigarettes? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
Your position is easy to grasp: Why should you subsidize this deplorable habit? Step back, though, and consider the basic situation here. Because you earn all the family income, you’ve taken it on yourself to exercise complete control over it, giving yourself unilateral veto power over your wife’s expenditures.
That’s a problem, and she has cause to resent your position. You’re not treating your wife as a partner, and you’re not genuinely treating the household earnings as a shared resource. You’ve left her like a Victorian wife reduced to pawning her earrings for spending money. Given that presumably she contributes to the household in other ways, including through her labor, it makes sense to treat your earnings as your family’s and to give her discretionary income. If she chooses to spend her share on cigarettes, that’s her choice.
At the same time, you should feel free, as a loving spouse deeply concerned for your wife’s welfare, to tell her regularly that you think she should quit. It’s just that the subject of the conversation should be her health, not your money. My father stopped smoking at my mother’s request, but when he relapsed, she relented, and a smoking-related cancer eventually cut his life short. I wish she’d stuck to her guns. Your wife may one day be grateful that you pushed her to stop smoking. But the way to help her do so isn’t through exploiting your financial leverage; it’s through discussing ways to kick the habit.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who wondered whether she should report her friend’s husband for not paying his taxes. She wrote:
A close friend of mine who is getting a divorce recently told me that her husband has not paid taxes for a very long time — possibly since before they were married. They have been filing separately, and she has dutifully paid taxes on all her earnings throughout. When she told me this, I showed surprise but made no judgment. It has bothered me ever since. As a retired educator, I am troubled that this man, a 60-year-old public-school teacher, has been avoiding something I consider to be a civic duty. Do I have a moral responsibility to report him? — Name Withheld
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
I agree that this man is failing in his civic duty; he’s also being reckless, because he’ll be in serious trouble if he’s caught. But there is a higher threshold for sharing things we learn in our circles of friendship than the fact that a third party — in this case, the government — has reason to know them. In a functioning community, friends don’t have to be hypervigilant in what they tell one another, because they can trust that nobody is secretly moonlighting as an enforcement agent for the treasury. Given that your friend and her husband are currently divorcing, and perhaps not on the best terms, it’s possible she’d be happy to see her husband audited. But if this were her aim in telling you, she’d be using you to settle scores, and the “using” part would be a problem. That’s her war to wage, not yours to be drafted into.
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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Public school teachers generally have an estimate of their tax obligation withheld from their paycheck. So although he might not have been filing his taxes, he has probably been paying them, or some large fraction of what he owes. That is a much less serious offense than hiding income, and I would not mention it to anybody. The I.R.S. will come calling eventually and require him to level up. — Laurence
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I put questions like this in the “Should I stop minding my own business and be a snitch?” category. Should everyone pay their fair share of taxes? Sure, but it’s not my business if someone doesn’t pay. If I’ve learned anything from reading this column over the years, it’s that we should be more responsible for our own personal ethics and less concerned about other people’s. Yes, we should obviously minimize harm when we can. But most of the time, we shouldn’t worry so much about what other people are doing. — Eliel
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I agree with the Ethicist’s answer, but I would expand on it: It’s doubtful that the husband, as a public-school educator, was able to stop his district from withholding taxes. When I was young, my father never filed taxes, but that doesn’t mean he denied the government his tax dollars. Instead, he just cheated our family out of a lot of tax return dollars. — Virginia
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I disagree with the Ethicist, and I say turn him in. This isn’t just about the writer, her friend and the tax cheat. It’s about all of us. If any of us discovers fraud and does not address it, we are participating in a degradation of the public good. Fraud against the government is fraud against all of us, and it affects disproportionately those at the margins of society. Bringing cheaters to justice is a direct way to make a difference for those worse off than ourselves. — Peder
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My advice would have included that the writer should encourage her friend to seek the advice of a lawyer on how she can protect herself. Even though they filed separately, or not at all in the case of the husband, the I.R.S. may look at things differently and say that the wife did not include all marital income in her taxes. My cousin was in the same boat. When the I.R.S. went after her husband, they also went after her. They were in the process of divorcing, and she lost her house and considerable life savings to bail him out. — Abe
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