How do you enforce that? Taxes pay for roads, parks, local goverment offices, etc. Is somebody who is behind on taxes prohibited from using public roads? Are they prohibited from entering the courthouse?
> How do you enforce that? Taxes pay for roads, parks, local goverment offices, etc. Is somebody who is behind on taxes prohibited from using public roads? Are they prohibited from entering the courthouse?
Those people are usually against public roads. Utopia is a toll road, I guess.
They have the same problem as many people who are more "against" something than for anything: in their focused zeal to stop that one thing they oppose, they propose a whole lot of other things that are actually worse or don't make sense. They also tend to have a hard time seeing that because they're so transfixed by the thing they hate that they're blinded.
Roads and other services can be paid for by their users, in driver license fees and vehicle registration fees. If you don't use the roads, you don't pay those fees. Sure, you will pay them indirectly if you have to have other people drive you around or deliver things, but it's still all voluntary.
That’s a different argument. You’re arguing that all taxes should be replaced by service fees. It’s also a problematic argument, because it’s highly regressive, extremely annoying or intrusive in practice (do I swipe my credit card every time I step into a park or call the fire department? Do I carry a tracker that monitors my activities and automatically bills me?) and also doesn’t address the question of social services.
But that aside, WincysWife isn’t arguing for a change in how money is collected, but how non-payment is penalized. The statement was that you lose access to services. My question, which hasn’t been answered, is how that is enforced when so much that the government does isn’t a simple “service” that is provided to you directly.
(It may be tempting to respond with another non-answer, such as “the government shouldn’t do those things,” but again that’s dodging the question. The government does do those things, and I’m trying to get at a real-world answer, not a hypothetical.)
I'm trying to reply but the website makes me wait between comments, probably because I have a new account.
There are lots of ways to raise money that don't involve throwing people in jail or confiscating their property for not paying. Pay per service is one, but not the only one. One should be able to cancel their subscription to government services and not have to pay. The Amish already do this for payroll taxes, do they are exempt because they have a mutual aid society that takes care of their medical and retirement needs.
We already live under a regressive tax system, especially for local governments which rely on sales and property taxes. Our current tax system is not convenient, and we pay a lot for poor service.
It would be silly to make a fuss over someone using a park if they don't pay taxes, but it could be dealt with like any other trespassing. My local park is paid for by the HOA, not the government, and it's not that big of a deal. We already have a system in place for paying for the roads. We pay the gas tax, and we have a system where you have to have a driver's license and insurance, and in many places you have to pay property taxes and/or sales tax on your car, and pay registration fees. It would be a simple matter to suspend someone's license for not paying taxes. Or you could decide to allow non-tax-payers to drive as long as they pay the gas tax when they fuel up.
I'm not saying that the government shouldn't necessarily do those things, but people should have the option to get their needs met by different organizations and not have to pay if they wish. For social needs like healthcare, education, welfare, that is very easy to do, just like the Amish do. Subscribe to a different organization that takes care of those things, and they will probably have a tithe or fee requirement, and rules, and that's fine as long as the person agrees to it. The only problem with the government system we have now is that we have no way of consenting or not consenting, and if we disobey, even if we are being peaceful and aren't violating anyone else's rights, we can be thrown in jail or have our property confiscated. It would really be quite simple to fix the flaw in the system. The only reason we haven't is because we're going off of a system made by people who were thinking outside of the box by rejecting monarchy. We then rejected slavery, gave rights to women, etc. We are still figuring out how to be moral.
> It’s also a problematic argument, because it’s highly regressive, extremely annoying or intrusive in practice (do I swipe my credit card every time I step into a park or call the fire department?
It's a parody of libertarianism, but that's exactly how Ferengi society worked in Star Trek, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVa8NaYTMIQ, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNCX6InQ3ZQ. There was one five minute scene I remember as a kid where Quark literally was dropping money in a box a couple times a minute to get his questions answered somewhere.
Of course anyone who goes on and on about "the threat of violence" when talking about taxes is not going to discuss the issue in good faith. "Building libraries by gunpoint" is a thought terminating cliche. They're a brand of libertarian that elevates the very concept of being required to do something they don't want to as violence against them.
They are exhausting to deal with.
Taxes are the dues you pay to live in the community you stay.
There's a lot the government should stay out of, but there's also a lot the government should be doing as well. And as long as the government should be doing things, it'll need money to do those things.
Don't pay your mortgage/rent and that will also happen.
Because that's what happens when owe money that you don't pay.
You chose where to live when you bought that property. That choosing is an implicit agreement with the government of that area to pay them taxes in exchange for certain services (schools, roads, police, fire, etc). And you are part of that choice whenever elections come up. Sure, you may vote 'No' on every tax increase, but that doesn't exempt you. Because, once again, as part of the agreement you implicitly made, you agreed to abide by the decision of the group in order to live in the area.
There are very few interactions where someone comes up to you without your consent and demands money at the threat of force. If anyone other than the government tries to do that we'd call it theft.
Look at how the Amish were able to opt out of social security.
We more than make up for the cost of tourists using public services with the money they spend on tourism. Also they pay sales tax where that's applicable.
The money residents spend on living costs is spent and circulates within the local economy, it doesn't go to the government (excepting sales tax, maybe.) How would a government fund infrastructure and services with that?
Personal income taxes are only a recent phenomena, introduced to bolster war efforts. Nothing prevents a nation funding itself through corporate and consumption taxes alone.
But we're discussing voluntary taxation here - corporations (already masters at tax avoidance under coercive taxation) would never opt in, nor would consumers volunteer to pay more for goods and services when they could simply pay less.
And since neither involves paying directly for a government service, there's nothing the government could deny in the absence of payment.
Those people are usually against public roads. Utopia is a toll road, I guess.
They have the same problem as many people who are more "against" something than for anything: in their focused zeal to stop that one thing they oppose, they propose a whole lot of other things that are actually worse or don't make sense. They also tend to have a hard time seeing that because they're so transfixed by the thing they hate that they're blinded.