I never understood that, since my impression as a layman was that taxation is needed to fund the things your country does, like building roads and such. Does the “taxation is theft” argument actually have a foundation on something, like some taxes being unfair, or is it totally unsubstanciated ?
Comments
Sometimes people mean that they think the government sucks at allocating and using tax money and the person could be using it for things they deem more worthy
I understand it to be a shorthand for “I was born into this world under the rule of a government; I didn’t consent to their offer of society in exchange for my labour and would not take it now if I had the choice. Taking something without consent is theft, and therefore taxation is theft.”
This leaves aside that no one is born into a blank slate of a world; we are all born into some context or another and have both rights and obligations as a result, and very few of them are freely chosen, among other objections.
it’s not an “unsubstantiated” thing…it’s just seeing the system without the patriotic marketing stickers slapped on it.
the “taxation is theft” argument basically says…if someone comes to your house and demands money under threat of force, and you don’t have a real choice to say no, that’s theft. doesn’t matter if they promise to spend it on roads or unicorn farms or world peace…the basic setup is still extortion.
the moral core of it isn’t about hating roads or fire departments. it’s about consent. real consent means you can say no without getting fined, arrested, or losing your home. taxation doesn’t work that way. you pay…or they come for you.
now yeah, people accept it because they think the benefits outweigh the robbery…or because they don’t think they have a better option…but it doesn’t magically change what it is at a raw level.
calling it theft doesn’t mean “i want anarchy and dirt roads” either. it’s just refusing to pretend force becomes benevolence just because it’s wearing a flag pin.
I’m taxed on my paycheck, again at the store, bills, services, property tax, capital gain tax, winnings tax, vehicle registration, fuel… feels like every 1000 i earn I’m only seeing 200…
Basically what gives that government the power to demand a percentage of all your earnings? Ultimately all laws, including tax laws, are enforced by the threat of violence. From that perspective taxes are barely different from a protection racket run by an organized crime syndicate. That cuts to the heart of why taxation can be perceived a theft.
The counter argument that its not theft holds weight in a democratic society where if you don’t like how much in taxes is collected or how the money is spent you can vote them out with a new government with fiscal policies more in line with your preferences. But what if you are in a single party authoritarian regime. Think China’s or Russia’s government. They tell you how much to pay and you have no recourse to change that. Now that is really indistinguishable from a protection racket and therefore really is theft.
They just do not want to contribute to society, but they still use roads, schools, fire departments etc. i.e. the things their taxes pay for.
It’s a dumb slogan for dumb people.
It means they need to change the channel on their TV
Besides the other answers about how its taken with a threat of force, the people saying this often distinguish between
A) Taking money for taxes and funding something all of society can use and needs, inluding the person it’s take from, like police protection and highways.
B) Taking money for taxes and giving it to another person, like welfare and food stamps.
The second seems more like “theft” because the person it’s take from derives no direct benefit from it.
Libertarians want to choose what they pay for. While I agree many of our tax dollars are misspent. Pay what you want would mean all the basic stuff (at least historically) the US does well: roads, mail, education, etc would never get funded.
They don’t want to pay for an educated populace, they don’t want to share the burden of paying for military, they don’t want to pay for police and fire departments.
These are the parasites in our society.
It means they’re American
Taxation is the non-voluntary contribution to the maintenance of a society. You can argue that the government sucks at most of the things they do but calling taxation theft is a stretch. Without taxation there would not be roads, airports, schools and many other services we accept daily.
You don’t want to pay taxes then when the real criminals come to see you and take your stuff either through force or big corporate fraud they will and you will be powerless to stop them.
Those people are what we called “self-centered prigs.”
it’s just some liberal propaganda. best ignored.
It’s pretty straightforward. Taxation is needed to fund the things your country does. AND it’s someone else deciding when, how and how much to take your money away from you to fund those things. “Taxation is theft” isn’t intended to be a fair and reasoned argument that considers both sides of the issue. It’s just a slogan for a political stance against taxation.
I met a professor like that I wonder if he is just lazy.
The full saying is taxation WITHOUT representation is theft. AKA if your representatives for your state and country are not listening or representing what the people want then it’s illegal. It’s not necessarily encouraging no taxes (some might think that) but rather reform in government like making sure corporate money isn’t influencing our laws more than we the people.
One aspect is, being forced to pay into a ether and the other aspect of it is, where is the money going towards?
In the EU for instance, they built a tunnel “for bikers”; but in reality it really isn’t.
It means those people don’t understand what taxes are for.
They dont understand how taxes work.
They mean “I am an idiot and a hypocrite”. Like my buddy who constantly rants about this crap but has one child in public school and receives almost $20.00 an hour 24/7 for another child that needs constant supervision. Other people drive on public roads…… all that.
I once got on a Libertarian page and asked a simple question. “Can you name one society or civilization in the entire history of the planet that was considered a successful society or civilization that was not taxed?”
I was banned, None can. It is impossible.
They say that without taxes, people will be so rich they will donate towards the things taxes now pay for. Which is laughable.
It’s libertarians, they aren’t serious people.
completely ironically, it’s an american philosophy started by wealthy land owners who didn’t want to pay property taxes. which is just hilarious considering this is all stolen land.
There’s a lot of good statements here. None of them really touch on the reason for (federal) taxes in modern society – inflation. Taxes exist to control inflation. They’re “theft” because the amount collected is really immaterial to government spending under Modern Monetary Theory.
Taxes exist to take money out of circulation.
They are stupid babies who want all the freedom and none of the responsibility of living in a society
What do they mean?
They mean that they have no concept of the way the world works.
I’m Canadian so I come from a country with lots of space. I think it’s valid if you’re living off grid hundreds of miles from the nearest road.
It essentially means they are selfish, shortsighted idiots.
It’s not until your drinking water makes you shit yourself to death
Different folks mean it different ways. However, if you look at it by the numbers alone…30% off the top in taxes is steep.
Federal taxes officially started in 1913, weeks had some before but it was temporary.
Ever since then the government keeps getting bigger and bigger and providing less and less.
People will say they provide roads and buses. But you pay to get on buses and some roads are toll.
The fed pisses away money and even convince Americans that 2 billion misplaced and not accounted for is not a big deal.
When I say taxes are theft, I mean it to be just that. Taking my money and spending it on pointless things or misplacing it.
Nether side wants to do real oversight, fix healthcare and have accountability.
If the democrats did places like Chicago and LA would actually be good and they would have fixed the issues.
But if you fix the issues you have nothing to run on next time.
Republican only want to let businesses fix the issues and say free market will solve its own problems.
Nether ones works and both cost lots of money.
I would much rather government workers understand that taxation is a form of theft, instead of believing that all the money they take from us is freely given to do whatever they feel like spending it on.
It’s “taxation without representation is theft.”
Confusing I know/s
When they said that. They were talking about using the American colonist’s tax money to fund wars in places they had nothing to do with.
The government still does shit like that now. The government uses our tax money to fund all kinds of shit we don’t actually want.
On top of literally charging children taxes every time they buy something. Despite them not being able to vote.
I always understood it as the current tax system is theft
I always thought it meant that taxing such a high level of our income was theft, I’ve heard a few people say that the moment the government thought they deserved more money than god(10%), they became thieves
They don’t understand what tax dollars go towards, such as the roads they drive on, and think they shouldn’t need to pay.
Also, they are also RWNJ sovereign citizens.
I can only speak to an American context, but here this sentiment is common among right-wing libertarians and conservatives who are generally completely ignorant to how the government works and what it does. Government work that they don’t like is “waste” and “inefficient” (especially compared to the all-mighty Private Sector), government work they do like isn’t considered government (conservatives don’t talk about police/military as “the government” even though they absolutely are). Generally speaking the “Taxation is Theft” crowd are ideologically aligned with mass privatization of the government and believe that handing off government functions to private companies will make them automatically better.
So it is substantiated… off of anarcho-capitalist/libertarian “Gubbmint Bad” nonsense dreamed up by the profoundly incurious/stupid or corporations willing to use them to accumulate more power/money.
FAIR taxation is what is needed to fund things.
When folks say “taxation is theft” they usually mean that their taxes are not going to things that truly support them or others. Their taxes are going to bombing children in Afghanistan or Syria or to a new gen 6 jet that’s 60 million each, or to some rich bloke’s bailout when they destroy their company again.
They’re usually fine with paying taxes when it is doing things like fixing the roads they drive on, funding libraries, improving healthcare, and helping homeless people.
The folks that say “Taxation is theft” and then bitch about homeless people getting hand outs or Transgender individuals existing are probably just assholes who don’t care about the common welfare.
“Stealing: the action or offense of taking another person’s property without permission or legal right and without intending to return it; theft.”
Now take out thr “legal right” of that definition.
Now someone takes 30+% of your hard earned income with you having no say in how or where or when it’s spent. You as a community may see it returned in seeable confirmable ways. You may not. You have no say on it you were born into it. So to people who are a bit antiauthority, antigov may be quick to lean to that opinion and seeing it as theft. Even your friendly old neighbors who are completely normal they may have been alive long enough to noticeably see taxes and costs in life increased and might just have had enough so now they politically switch to low taxes any government waste (according to them) is now theft. Etc….
I’m not saying these are my beliefs. I inderstsnd the necessity. Would like more wisdom in their spending… but they may know things I don’t
But that’s my understanding of the thought process
They mean that they’re ignorant and think that the society they live in and benefit from every single day can function without social support in the form of collective taxation, either because they don’t understand how much of what they use is taxpayer-supported, or because they think it can all be privatized and still function as it does currently.