[tasty_freeze]

50% of the country believes tax is theft, and they also imagine if there were no taxes and the IRS abolished we'd somehow still continue to support an army, have a federal court system, a patent office, etc, etc, and that their state will continue to get federal subsidies.

That was the entire point of Obama's speech that republican news sources and libertarians eviscerated him for: "You didn't build that". He wasn't saying that you didn't build your business; he was stating you didn't build all the infrastructure that allowed you to build and run your business, and that is why taxes are not theft.

There is a legitimate argument over how much taxes and what is should be spent on, but those nuanced discussions are entirely replaced by BS.

[cheeseomlit]

Every dollar I've ever paid in federal taxes has been thrown into a black hole of debt never to be seen again, their actual spending is fueled by debasement of the currency (IE. money printing). The only purpose of taxation in such a system is to reduce inflationary pressure caused by their own malfeasance, I can't imagine they actually need the revenue since there seems to be no relationship between revenue and spending anyways. This all makes our current system of taxation feel less like a civic duty and more like a scam.

>50% of the country believes tax is theft, and they also imagine if there were no taxes and the IRS abolished we'd somehow still continue to support an army, have a federal court system, a patent office, etc, etc, and that their state will continue to get federal subsidies.

That is not at all what 50% of the country believes, its a hyperbolic strawman. Obviously taxation is necessary to fund public services, just because someone criticizes the litany of flaws in our specific system doesn't mean they don't believe in the concept of taxation. Funny that you go on to complain about lack of nuance.

[tasty_freeze]

One party has been defunding the IRS, even though spending $1 in IRS budget returns $6 in uncollected taxes. One party even has congressmen saying the IRS should be removed entirely.

> Every dollar I've ever paid in federal taxes has been thrown into a black hole of debt never to be seen again

This contradicts what you say later: taxes are returned in the form of public services.

Back in the 50s the max tax rate (for a very few, but very rich people) was 90%. Corporations collectively contributed about half of what individual taxes did; now it is about 10%. The 2017 (?) tax bill forgave more than $1T in corporate taxes that were owed and gave some people a couple thousand dollars tax break; but while those corporate tax cuts were permanent, that same law that dropped the rate for some individuals was written to increase individual tax rates every two years and in no time those people are paying more in taxes than before.

If the Bush and Trump tax cuts for corporations and rich people had not ever happened, the debt would be going down (ignoring the extraordinary circumstances of covid).

Rich people and rich corporations can afford to get the laws written in their favor.

corporate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX individual: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A074RC1Q027SBEA

chart showing the ratios over time: https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/federal/composition-of-fe...

[cheeseomlit]

>One party has been defunding the IRS, even though spending $1 in IRS budget returns $6 in uncollected taxes. One party even has congressmen saying the IRS should be removed entirely.

Sure, funding the IRS increases revenue. But we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. The amount of revenue they collect is utterly massive and should be more than enough to pay for all the public services we need, but it's not because they are wildly irresponsible with it. I find it hard to swallow that the solution is to squeeze us for even more.

> Every dollar I've ever paid in federal taxes has been thrown into a black hole of debt never to be seen again

> This contradicts what you say later: taxes are returned in the form of public services.

Taxes are returned in the form of public services in a healthy functional system, one which I would like to live in. My argument is that our system is not healthy and functional. Public services are provided but taxes have little relevance in how those services are paid for, at least on a federal level. If the government has the authority to simply print all the money it needs, and does so frequently with seemingly no limits, then what is the point of taxes? As I said, I think it's just to relieve inflationary pressure caused by fundamentally irresponsible monetary policy, whereas in an ideal functioning system there would be a direct relation between revenue -> spending on public services, as you say.

As for the rest of your post I basically agree, our tax code is quite obviously the product of corporate interest. But I don't think it's fair to conflate the opinions of "50% of the country" with that of the GOP party brass corpos. I think the predominant feeling on this topic among the GOP base is that of mistrust for the IRS (which is justified considering their previous political scandals) and more general sentiments of smaller government, which is not the same thing as 'taxation is theft'