Dude, it’s a profitable farm. The only main difference is how they allocate ownership and organise labour. Your criticism applies equally to all farms.
My criticism is that it doesn't scale and they're freeloaders. And you can bet if enough people started dodging taxes like this, the IRS would be on the case. But it's small scale so they get away with it.
I don't think they're doing something morally wrong, to be clear. Just that it can't scale.
Other farms pay tax fully, and my criticism doesn't apply.
There was a time, for that matter, where most of the U.S. economy was agrarian. The world still worked. There were fewer government services, to be sure- but if most people are members of semi-self-sufficient communities, fewer services would be needed.
Eating food grown and prepared by other people in a community of 70+ people, in exchange for your labor in other areas, and paying no tax on any of it.... tax dodge.
How many people does it have to be, in your opinion, before it's a tax dodge?
However, East Wind is incorporated as a 501(d) organization, which is what monasteries use. For more info on 501(d) orgs: https://www.irs.gov/irm/part7/irm_07-025-023
I can't find anything specific, but I think that since they share their income and produce as a collective, they're only liable for taxes on their share of the income that the collective produces. Monks don't have to pay taxes on the value they get from the monastery vegetable garden.
Tax avoidance is a time-honored American tradition. This is one way to do so. It sounds like they've done their legal homework if they've managed to survive 30 years without IRS trouble.