Doing Fine: Should the Rich Pay Higher Penalties?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

October 1, 2025

The Associated Press reports:

The driver was clocked going 27 kilometers per hour (17 mph) over the speed limit on a street in the Swiss city of Lausanne, and now he’s facing up to 90,000 Swiss francs (over $110,000) in fines as a result. But he can afford it.

Why the eye-popping penalty? Because the speedster, a repeat offender, is one of Switzerland’s wealthiest people, and the Vaud canton, or region, serves up fines based on factors like income, fortune, or general family financial situation.

The Swiss are not alone. Germany, France, Austria, and the Nordic countries all issue punishments based on a person’s wealth. The recent fine isn’t even a record in Switzerland. In 2010, a millionaire Ferrari driver got a ticket equal to about $290,000 for speeding in the eastern canton of St. Gallen.

Back then, the Swiss safety group Road Cross said rich drivers had been lightly punished until voters approved a penal law overhaul three years earlier that let judges hand down fines based on personal income and wealth for misdemeanors like speeding and drunk driving.

Under today’s rules, an indigent person might spend a night in jail instead of a fine, while the wealthiest in the rich Alpine country could be on the hook for tens of thousands.

A court in the Swiss canton of Vaud recently ruled that the tycoon must pay 10,000 Swiss francs ($12,300) up front and could be forced to pay the rest—80,000 more—if he’s caught for a similar roadway infraction over the next three years…

The Vaud criminal code sets a maximum financial penalty based on the “personal and economic situation of the offender at the time of the ruling”—notably taking into account issues like income, fortune, lifestyle, and family financial needs.

[Switzerland’s “24 Heures” newspaper] reported that he had already been caught for a similar speeding infraction eight years ago, and he paid 10,000 Swiss francs in penalty and faced another 60,000 if another infraction had taken place within the following two years.[1]

Linking fines to income is a European idea and is uncommon in the U.S.[2]

This article and a follow-up present a couple of contexts in the Torah in which fines or atonement obligations are assessed in accordance with the offender’s means. This article discusses the korban oleh veyoreid (variable offering), and the following one discusses certain charitable obligations for kaparah (atonement) that take means into account. (Ma’asros (tithes), taxes, and other communal obligations are often a function of means; our discussion is specifically about obligations assessed for kaparah.)

Korban oleh veyoreid

The most prominent example of a means-linked kaparah obligation is the korban oleh veyoreid. While most of the korbanos that the Torah mandates for kaparah are fixed, in certain cases the Torah prescribes both more and less expensive versions of a korban. For three sins,

• Shvuas ha’eidus (one who is subpoenaed to testify and swears falsely that he has no knowledge of the matter)
• Tum’as mikdash vekadashav (one who is impure and eats kadshim (holy food) or enters the Bais Hamikdash);
• Shvuas bitui (a general false oath)

the Torah prescribes a chatas (sin offering) consisting of a female lamb or kid by default, two turtledoves or pigeons if the offender cannot afford those animals, and a mincha (flour offering) if the offender cannot afford the birds.[3]

In two other contexts, the Torah provides two options:

• A woman who gives birth brings by default a male lamb as an olah (elevation offering) and a pigeon or turtledove as a chatas. If she cannot afford this, she brings two pigeons or two turtledoves.[4]
• A metzora whose tzara’as clears up brings a number of korbanos, including by default two male lambs as a chatas and an olah. One who cannot afford them brings two turtledoves or two pigeons.[5]

The obvious question is why these cases are the exceptions that prove the rule that the nature of a prescribed atonement korban is independent of the sinner’s wealth. With regard to the three sins in the first category above, the Ramban suggests:

It is possible that the reason for the leniency in the case of oaths is because the punishment (if the violation had been intentional) is not kareis (excision). And in the case of defiling the Mikdash or its kadshim, the leniency may be because the person erred while performing a mitzvah, because the kohein who eats the kadshim or enters the Mikdash to bow or to bring a korban is involved in a mitzvah and his intent is for Heaven, and therefore even though he sinned in forgetting his tum’ah, the Torah gave him more means of kaparah.[6]

The Sefer Hachinuch gives an alternate explanation: These aveiros are particularly common and frequent, so the Torah was more lenient regarding their kaparah.[7]

While the Ramban and the Chinuch both understand korban oleh veyoreid as a leniency for particular sins, due to various mitigating factors that render them less severe, R’ Shamson Raphael Hirsch understands it as a stringency, due to the momentousness of these sins. Rav Hirsch expounds upon the moral, social, and religious significance of these sins, and then concludes:

Right, Justice, the basis of society, moral freedom of will, the basis of the Mikdash, Truth, the basis of the human mind and will, all documented and championed by Hashem Himself, these are the convictions on the ground of which Jewish life flourishes. Not one of them can be dispensed with—not achas mei’eileh—without becoming unfaithful to the whole future of the mission of every Jew. And if he has slipped and sinned against one of these fundamental principles, even with a certain amount of he’elam (unconsciousness and unintention), then the Torah sees to it that everyone, down to the poorest member of the Jewish Nation, is brought to realize how asham le’achas meieileh—how, having sinned against being always conscious of one of these—he has trodden the threshold of desolation and solitude. How Hashem expects everyone, down to the very poorest, to be a guarantor of Justice in Society, of Morality in the Mikdash, and of Truth in the human mind; and that He will only spare entry into desolation and loneliness if he is misvadeh to himself asher chata aleha, if he takes to heart in all its absolute objectivity, the whole initial impulse which brought about the sin; and then, with a suitable offering expressing his determination to keep his mind more fully conscious of his duty in the future, finds his way back to his lost nearness to Hashem on the heights of the Altar of the Sanctuary of the Torah.[8]

We have omitted much of the detail and subtlety of Rav Hirsch’s analysis, but he apparently means that for most aveiros that require a chatas for kaparah, the Torah simply prescribes an animal, and if a pauper cannot afford one, he will simply not bring a chatas and will miss out on the korban’s corrective benefits. For these three aveiros, however, due to their paramount importance, it is essential that every sinner obtain the benefits, so the Torah offers less-expensive alternatives. In other words, the Torah is not being lenient by allowing the poor man to bring something cheaper, but being stringent by requiring him to bring something rather than nothing at all.

In any event, regardless of the rationale offered for the uniqueness of the specific sins in question, the korban oleh veyoreid framework is fundamentally the opposite of the European model of linking fines to earnings: Here, there is a standard obligation that is reduced for the poor, while in the European model there is a standard obligation that is increased for the rich.

In the following article we shall iy”H consider later halachic frameworks of charitable obligations for kaparah that are similar to the European model in establishing baseline standard obligations that increase with the offender’s wealth.

[1]Jamey Keaten. A driver faces up to $110,000 in fines for speeding on a Swiss street. But he can afford it. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/switzerland-lausanne-speeding-ticket-edd115a3916250c7809d1bb338a33663.

[2]Alec Schierenbeck. The Constitutionality of Income-Based Fines. The University of Chicago Law Review. 85.8.

[3]Vayikra 5:1-13.

[4]Ibid. 12:6-8.

[5]Ibid. 14:10-32.

[6]Ramban Vayikra 5:7.

[7]Sefer Hachinuch, mitzvah 123.

[8]R’ Shamson Raphael Hirsch, Vayikra (Part I) 2^nd Edition, pp. 145-48.