Topic: Is taxation theft? - page 9. (Read 2220 times)

If you pay more taxes than you are willing to, then yes, it's theft. When I was poor, I didn't mind paying taxes and was happy that rich people paid higher taxes for the sake of equality. But as my income gradually increased --I'm not saying that I'm rich, just less poor-- paying taxes no longer felt like a voluntary action. Every time I pay my taxes, it feels like getting my testicles electrocuted.

FTFY

Income tax and sales tax/VAT didn't exist 100+ years ago. Look it up.

Commies are very honest about their intentions:



Most taxes in the West were imposed during the Great Depression (and who caused that? your beloved bankers).

What kind of "horror" exactly?

The fact that you have billions of transistors in the palm of your hand?

Free market is the best way to reduce prices, as long as it's not manipulated by gov cronies (like the electricity market for example).

Nice Marxist speech!

First of all, why don't you open a sandwich shop yourself if it's so "profitable"? Then you can hire me and pay me a high wage. Will you do it?

Second, why do you think the worker that assembles iPhones in Foxconn "deserves" to get paid as much as the iPhone inventor (Steve Jobs)?

Without Steve Jobs, the Foxconn worker would have no job.

But in a globalized world of 8 billion people and open borders it's laughably easy to find cheap workers...

Most leftists want open borders though, despite the fact it destroys their wages (Marx had said something about that).

You assume that the only way to fund all this infrastructure is via taxes, but your assumption is dead wrong.

How many people here know the roots of the word "sponsor"?

It comes from the Ancient Greek word «σπoνδή».

In Ancient Greece rich people donated money to fund theaters and other public activities. Why? Because they loved good fame.

Now let's see some recent examples of this analogy (donations from rich people):

https://www.naftemporiki.gr/business/1447267/oikonomiki-voitheia-10-000-eyro-stoys-syggeneis-thymaton-sta-tempi-apo-to-filanthropiko-idryma-stelios-chatziioannoy/
https://www.cnn.gr/ellada/story/363086/idryma-stelios-xatziioannou-stis-560-000-to-poso-tis-doreas-stis-oikogeneies-ton-thymaton-sta-tempi

And also let's see how compulsory taxation looks like:

https://www.cnn.gr/oikonomia/chrima/story/353525/anakoinothikan-oi-apozimioseis-gia-tous-syggeneis-ton-thymaton-sta-tempi

Free pensions, easy access to become a civil servant, debt cancellation (Biden style ), all paid with taxpayer money.

Which one of the 2 ways do you prefer? The Ancient Greek way or the... Soviet way?

If you think compulsory taxation is the only "fair" way to eliminate "inequality", let me put it this way:

Would you enjoy it if the state confiscated women to offer them to incels, or perhaps to solve the demographics issue in the West? (more babies born via compulsory sex aka rape)

Well, guess what? Compulsory taxes are a form of financial rape.

Donations/optional taxes are like consensual sex.

Leftists need to make up their minds for once:

If sexual rape is not OK, then why is financial rape OK?

Consent is key, always. And as I said, there are ways to fund social welfare in a consensual manner.

But if you want lazy rats to get pensions or salaries (in the public sector) they do not deserve, then I'm afraid donations won't be enough.

I also have a Bitcoin-related example:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoiner-donates-500k-assange-freedom
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/06/25/julian-assanges-family-is-raising-funds-for-him-with-bitcoin/

How would you feel if the state confiscated 8 BTC from a whale to help Julian Assange? Would it be "OK"?

The result would be literally the same, but lack of consent makes a hell of a difference.

That's what happens in the US and if you take good care of your health (most people don't), then chances are you will never need Big Pharma services.

But no, you're just a cog in the machine and you don't have time to do research about how a proper diet can prevent tons of diseases (heart attacks, obesity, diabetes etc). Am I right?

You want to eat Doritos and McDonalds and then you want "free" (tax-funded) healthcare to get well.

How about NOT getting sick in the first place? Just visit a supermarket and tell me what kind of food most (overweight) people buy.

Believe it or not, we would need way less hospitals with proper lifestyle choices. We don't need to squander tons of taxes to cure Dorito-addicted people.

We need more personal accountability and less nanny state that treats adults like babies.

The average working man doesn't know how to make good use of their money, unlike corporations.

Just because someone is hard working, doesn't mean he's smart. Just look at no-coiners for example. Inflation is a form of hidden tax and they literally don't care to do something about it.

It's not cool to deliberately misinform people:

https://www.quora.com/Did-the-Soviet-Union-have-a-tax-system-If-yes-then-how-did-it-differ-from-the-ones-in-capitalist-countries
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/59ud3i/did_the_soviet_union_have_a_tax_system_if_yes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnover_tax_in_the_Soviet_Union

Everyone living in this world is paying taxes directly and indirectly. Can you ensure that everyone knows the indirect taxes they pay for every purchase, including small groceries to any luxury item? So let's just assume someone in the metro stole a wallet from someone and due to the crowd the victim is not aware of his lost wallet but it's still considered as theft.

Laws are not passed with everyone's consent, when the government has a majority they can do whatever they want and the remaining should accept it whether they consent to it or not. Taxes are not imposed on only who voted for the winning party, it became common to everyone.

Yeah, I have similar views toward democracy as well specially since majority of the people who vote are sheeple voting for whoever gives them the craziest promises and then we all end up with thieves in office
The best example is the Biden vs Trump s**tshow in America ...

That's called Robin Hood.

Most public goods cannot be funded in an alternative way than taxes.
I'm talking about public goods like national security(your country having and army and intelligence), law enforcement(police and court system), etc. Infrastructure projects like roads and streets can be partially funded with a Toll system and/or vignettes, but that's more like an exception to the rule. The educational system and the healthcare system can be privatized, but most countries stay away from such right wing policies.
Everyone hates when the government is taking money from them, but what would your country look like, if there aren't any roads and highways and there's no army, police and courts, no schools and hospitals? It would look like total chaos.

I don't believe taxation is theft. When used for public welfare, it benefits everyone.

Taxation is not an illegal thing so it is not a theft and very far from being theft.
All taxes withdrawn from an individual is notified before it is taking it can only be a theft when not notified at all any increase in tax collecting must also be notified.
But we are still in this planet if the government wants to gain from tax collection they go through individual business owners where as the tax they issue on that business will yield them what they want and it is not still a theft because both parties had an agreement on how much your business will pay before the establishment or operation.

When the government bombs countries and destroys other nations, you wouldn't call it "authorized killing". You would call it genocide. By the same line of reasoning, just because the government allows itself to confiscate property, you wouldn't call it "authorized taking", but theft or robbery.

But is there really consent in democracy? If you do not belong to the majority (which supposedly wants to pass these laws), then, unless you leave the borders of your country, there is nothing else you can do, whether you consent or not.

In a democracy, you are presented with several options and allowed to vote for one. Regardless of the outcome, you are compelled to accept it, even if you dislike all the options. To me, this is akin to choosing which mobster represents you better. Believing that you have a say in the matter is a grand illusion.

If a thief stole your property and donated it to charity or funded public infrastructure, wouldn't you still call it theft? The only difference with the government taking your property is that you are aware when it happens.

There's no yes-or-no answer to this question. I cannot see taxation as theft. However, this applies as long as my taxes are being put to good use to provide a quality life. This means that I've got free public healthcare whenever I need it, free public education with no strings attached, decent roads and infrastructure, and if the salaries are enough to ensure a comfortable life, then I'd be fine with paying my share.

However, this usually isn't the case, at least in Greece and certainly in other countries as well, where you pay excessive taxes without even providing the basics, while the massive taxation of 24% is encouraging people to tax evasion. If they were a more reasonable amount, then fewer people would actually be led to tax evasion in order to make ends meet.

Then what's the point of parliament and legislation body that people chose to pass those laws? If they chose them, then tax is not taking their property without consent, they've already consented to it.
If they don't like it, they should change the law but until then it is not theft.

The only real questions that should be asked are:
1) Where is that money being spent? And if it is being wasted somewhere, how can that be fixed?
2) What's the alternative if there were no taxes? Tax is being spent somewhere, right? Like the defense budget. Where should that money come from without taxes? Who's going to pay the armed forces to defend your country specially at this time that the global tensions are rising.

Taxation is not theft, but the government is the thief because it steals money from taxing the community which should be used for the welfare of the community.
We see that there are countries that have high taxes and their people are prosperous, at least the public facilities in that country are of the best quality and people's income is high so there is no problem with high taxes, there are countries that do not apply taxes because they have large income from natural resources, but there are countries that it seems low in implementing taxes, but the people do not have large incomes or opportunities to improve their lives, so no matter how small the tax that has to be paid, it is still miserable for them and the government lives in luxury from the tax proceeds, so the thief is the government that lives in luxury by committing corruption from the tax proceeds, so taxes don't matter as long as they are actually used for the welfare of the community, building the best public facilities, not building luxurious houses for their officials.

taxition on crypto make sense than taxing the money they can print themselves.

take it from the gang master Nayeb. 😁

No state can exist without taxes and this must be recognized. There are many professions that do not directly benefit people and therefore they must receive compensation for their work from the state, which, in turn, can allocate it through the collection of taxes. This applies to teachers, teachers, military and many other professions. The state also needs funds for various social projects - the construction of roads, bridges, various social infrastructure, which create certain living conditions for people. Therefore, not a single state can do without collecting taxes.

A completely different question is the amount of fair taxation. Here, each of us has our own considerations and there will never be unity on this issue. But in general, I don't think taxes are theft. Under certain circumstances, theft can only be recognized as excessively high taxation and abuse in this area when distributing the expenditure of funds collected in this way.

I vote no, I do not consider taxes to be theft, even if the government takes them forcefully most of the time and perhaps they are wasted incorrectly, but I do not consider them to be theft, because the government needs money to provide services to citizens, and citizens have to pay for the services they receive.

Yes, taxes can be stolen by some officials or some corrupt governments, but even in this case we cannot call taxes “theft.” Rather, we can call the government a “thief.”

Yes, in some cases when exaggerated taxes are imposed on some services or products, we can call this an excess and a kind of theft.

Taxation is an agreement between the government and the people. It becomes theft if the government is not holding up its promises. Which happens very frequently.

So, in most cases, yes. Taxation is theft.

Hem, for me, it seems like robbery. Ooops.

Just imagine, every year or certain period, there will definitely be changes regarding tax, whether it's the percentage, or the area where tax must be collected. And this will continue to increase. Wow, they take a lot of money from the people, with all the laws in place.

But what's even more annoying is:
They even corrupted it collectively. Ah never mind, it's quite painful for me to accept that. But I'm not empowered.
\In fact, every transaction on the local exchange is immediately deducted from tax. Hmm, what's more, there is talk that the institution that manages crypto in my country will change its official operations next year, there is a possibility that this will be related to an increase in the amount of taxes too. Hahaha, should I laugh this loudly?

Taxation is one of the largest failures of capitalism.

Capitalism as a system will ideologically justify any horror the rich bring upon us as freedom, saying that free markets is the best system we have to our disposal.
However, the burden of averting societal collapse falls on the working man still.

From the moment you give out your labour to a corporation, this is where the thievery begins. This corporation will pay you back only a portion of what you have produced for them.
Say you work at a sandwich shop making sandwiches. On a daily basis you make enough product for Mr. Bossman to have 200$ pure profit after all expenses. What is he gonna pay you? Probably you'd be lucky to get paid 50$ a day if the "market rate" is a little lower than that for this kind of work.

And then who's gonna be responsible for upkeep and maintenance of infrastructure that will keep our society running? We need hospitals, roads, public warning networks, courts systems, blood banks... Doctors. Generally speaking we need many things to run a society and not everything can run on profit or a per-use basis otherwise we're gonna die or a very big part of the workforce will stop being able to function.

All this infrastructure is in the end acting as a subsidy to how lacking your wages are. Because surely in a free economy if your wages were enough you wouldn't settle for the public handouts and would rather seek out more premium services, right?

But on top of all this, the ultimate irony is that proportionally, the working man pays higher taxes than corporations. Corporations might also pay taxes, but their tax rate is capped at a 25% rate on most countries. Whereas individual tax rates are reaching levels up to 80%. Adding in insurance, pension and other taxes that individuals have to pay, taxation is very disproportionate no matter how you see it.

Ironically, people fond of "good capitalism" will shout that taxation is theft, while there has never been an example of a state where there was no taxation as we know it, with the only exception being (drumroll please)... Communist states.

It’s hard to comment on this, coming from a country that uses indirect tax in taxation and limits direct taxation to those in the civil service.

Still, I wouldn’t view taxation as legalized theft, not by any context although, I do feel a bit uneasy when you tax an already taxed money but, to whom much is given, much is also expected as the good book of the Christians would say.

When you look at what the tax payers money is been used for, you have little reason to complain over the the process. You’re certainly enjoying a lot from the taxes you pay and that should be something to find comfort in.
Taxation is not theft but, a system to ensure the government purse stays filled to provide the basics for every citizen within the state and run government affairs.

If taxation is imposed on someone who can't afford to have its burden then it's somehow a type of crime while if you see it at growth point of view of an economy then it's a very useful tool to support an economy.

Personally, I'm against the idea of heavy taxation because there are group of people who can't pay higher taxes and during having taxation they are forced to pay the taxes and for that they have to do many sacrifices.

Small taxes aren't bad but when it gets to higher numbers then those type of taxes make citizens to take somehow bad decisions. Some of the citizens might leave an economy where paying high taxes are mandatory while others try their best to avoid paying taxes by finding some loopholes in the system.