[mikeash]

I think you do, at least if you want to convincingly argue that this shouldn’t have happened. The existence of a better way is decidedly non-obvious.

It’s not as if there’s a bunch of standard alternatives they could have used. Traditionally, taxation is enforced by garnishing wages, forcibly withdrawing money from accounts, seizing property, or putting people in jail. None of these were possible here except for seizing property. The only alternative I see is to just let delinquents get away with not paying taxes forever, which defeats the whole purpose of taxes.