[qwerty456127]

AFAIK historically people could use shells like money although there was no central bank, no taxes and some random people could occasionally "issue" new with the help of the sea. Any token that is reasonably convenient to be used as money and is not too easy to issue can be used as money. The idea that taxation is what makes them valuable looks pretty bizarre to me.

[AnimalMuppet]

If there's a head tax of three quatloos per year, then I have to get three quatloos every year. So does everybody else. That creates a value for quatloos, no matter how useless they otherwise are.

On the other hand, if it's an income tax, something like "How many quatloos did you make this year? Send in one-third of them", and I didn't make any quatloos because I use some other kind of money, well, I owe exactly zero quatloos (until the government figures out the loophole and, worse, fixes the exchange rate).