La tassa kosher si riferisce a una leggenda urbana, in chiave antisemita, secondo la quale i consumatori di ristoranti con specialità culinarie ebraiche pagherebbero inconsapevolmente una "tassa" extra sul consumo, che verrebbe poi destinata dai sionisti al sostegno della causa di Israele. La pretesa secondo cui i consumatori sarebbero sottoposti a questa tassa è stata avanzata da varie parti[1]. Analoghe affermazioni vorrebbero che la "tassa" sia "estorta" alle aziende alimentari, desiderose di sottrarsi al boicottaggio.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]
Nonostante non si tratti puramente di una teoria antisemita, né di ipotesi di complotto, molte associazioni e personalità si sono espresse al riguardo. Secondo la professoressa di sociologia all'università di Pittsburgh, Kathleen M. Blee, si tratta di una credenza fondamentalmente razzista nata per boicottare e far decadere il mercato culinario ebraico.[7]
«Gli antisemiti hanno avanzato la credenza del "calunnia della tassa kosher" secondo cui i consumatori inconsapevoli pagherebbero una tassa extra sui prodotti con certificazione kosher.»
^ISBN 0-8135-2563-2 Jeffery Kaplan, Leonard Weinberg, The emergence of a Euro-American radical right, New Brunswick (New Jersey), Rutgers University Press, febbraio 1999, p. 163, LCCN98023536.
«Il lato oscuro di questo commercio, è che alcuni gruppi d'odio antisemita hanno sviluppato una teoria bizzarra e senza fondamento, secondo cui esiste una "tassa kosher" sul cibo, che va a prolificare un complotto ebraico che vuole estorcere quanto più denaro a una larga popolazione.»
^Tuchman, Aryeh. "Dietary Laws", in Levy, Richard S. Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, ABC-CLIO, 2005, p. 178. "Antisemites have decried this certification as a 'kosher tax' that powerful Jews have enlisted governments to collect on their behalf; others have alleged that greedy rabbis threaten businesses with a Jewish boycott unless they accept their fee-based kosher certification."
«Media Bypass, for one, offered a story about a 'Kosher Nostra scam,' in which 'major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars per year in order to receive protection' against Jewish boycotts. These 'elaborate extortion schemes' are coordinated, alleges writer Ernesto Cienfuegos, by 'Rabbinical Councils that are set up, not just in the U.S. but in other western countries as well.'»
«Some [racist groups] urge their members to boycott products certified as kosher.»
See also footnote 70: "For example, see 'Kosher Racket Revealed: Secret Jewish Tax on Gentiles' (pamphlet distributed by an anonymous racist group, ca. 1991)," p. 232.
«Some antisemitic myths continued to proliferate through the year 2000. The Kosher Tax myth claims that the purchase of foods with a kosher symbol on it means that a portion of that money constitutes a tax which benefits the Jewish people. Individuals are advised to go to their cupboards and estimate the worth of all the foods which have those "hidden" symbols on them and claim the money back from the government in their tax returns. Many of the alerts that our offices received about the distribution of the "Kosher Tax" advisories were from accountants who received them as a mailing or were given them along with instructions from their clients to include the material in their taxes. According to these accountants, the people who wanted the refund were not antisemites per se but had received the letters and were ignorant to the meaning of the symbols on the groceries. However, it could be said that those fooled were all too ready to believe the message of the advisories that Jews are sneakily trying to extort money from an unsuspecting public.»