I love the first line point, but the subsequent ones are not without some errors as far as I am concerned. Fine, it's ugly behaviour for the government not to use the national wealth of the nation rightly but this can't be related to the tax itself but the bad behaviour of the government. So, it is the government you should call theives and not the context "tax" in all considerations.
Taxes and other government revenues means are the main sustenance of the nation, I wonder how the nation will look like if the government can't fulfil its local and international obligations for the shortage of money, they have to make people contribute. Some countries are so disadvantaged to the point that they do not have much lands and natural resourses, so if their government did not collect tax, what will the security, education and healthcare system be like, not to mention others.
First of all, there are some nations which are so poor that they can't even join some summits, we have seen plenty of poor nations and we know how that goes. Secondly, nobody says we shouldn't pay ANY taxes, the idea is what if we are paying way more than we should? Lets be honest and realize some of the taxes that we pay, gets lost along the way.
This doesn't have to be pocketed directly by politicians, they could for example hire their brother in law to build a bridge, the bridge costs the brother in law to build 100 million, but they charge a billion to the government, when they could have profited with 200. See how theft happens? The citizens of a nation should be able to ask where their money goes and if there is too many corrupt officials who do this. So thinking, if 50% of our money goes to corruption, then we could literally pay half of the taxes we are paying and get the same type of government if nobody was corrupt, seems like a good idea isn't it?