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From: trc@hou5a.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Voltaxes and Theftaxes
Message-ID: <536@hou5a.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Mar-84 18:06:46 EST
Article-I.D.: hou5a.536
Posted: Mon Mar 12 18:06:46 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Mar-84 19:40:06 EST
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ
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Reposted - sorry if you see a repeat
-------------------------------------
Phil Polli has taken up the cause "taxation is moral" - IE it is not theft.  
I agree that taxation is not intrinsically theft.  People can form a political 
system and agree to voluntarily pay a tax to support the role they have agreed 
the "state" should take.  Taxes become theft when the system forces people to 
pay them.  

Of course, maybe one should *define* taxes as involuntary, in which case, I 
would call them intrinsically theft.  To clarify discussion, I suggest we use 
"voltax" to  indicate any "taxation" that is properly voluntary, "theftax" for 
non-voluntary taxes, and "taxation" for the general class.  Even if a political
system declares its taxes to be voluntary in principle, if the system uses 
force to obtain taxes, the tax is a theftax.  (Theft is the use of force to 
take someone else's property - IE without their voluntary consent.  BTW, force
and violence are not the same thing, and I really do mean force, rather than
just violence.)

I do think that taxes in the US are theftaxes.  If I did not know that I 
would be tossed in jail, or effectively exiled, I would not be paying as 
much tax as I do, to support so many government programs that I am opposed 
to.  It is this use of force that makes US taxes theftaxes.  

The only leverage a political system should have over people in causing them 
to pay taxes is the possibility of loss of the benefits of belonging to that 
system.  This is analogous to a business refusing to provide a service to 
someone who refuses to pay for it.  Citizenship *could* properly be made 
conditional upon payment of taxes.  Polli might say "If you wont pay taxes, 
get out" - which means essentially the same thing, but applied specifically 
to *government* types of political systems.  A government holds power over a 
geographic area, so that to "get out" really means being forced to give up 
one's hearth and homeland - hardly voluntary.  The only way to avoid this 
problem is to either make taxes truly voluntary, or to give up the concept 
of a geographically based political system - since by letting people form or 
join other political systems without "moving out", the geographic monopoly on
force of a government would be violated.

I think that it might be interesting to discuss how the US tax system could
be converted to pure "voltaxes".  While it really doesnt seem like a necessary
function of government, we could assume for the moment that no other problems
would arise from allowing people that wanted to to designate that they be
taxed more and the money given to the world's hungry, or whatever.  The 
questions that we *need* to answer are - 

What *should* be paid for by everyone?  
How can we get them to pay for it without using force, and without 
  some spoiling it by "free-loading" (that could encourage future 
  changes back towards theftaxes)?  (Ayn Rand proposed that the 
  government charge a fee for every contract that the involved parties
  wanted enforced, in proportion to the amount of money involved.)
How is spending of the tax money to be controlled?
Could whatever proposal we come up with be made into law, within
  the reality of our current political system?  How?

	Tom Craver
	hou5a!trc