Which I mean, my wife believes that the government using the threat of violence to collect taxes is immoral, unethical, and that all transactions between all individuals should be voluntary and nonviolent. Which in terms of popular discourse, is very "extreme". She was thinking about running for local public office an a platform of "the government will not take away your propery for failure to pay taxes" which a surprising number of local people on Facebook supported. She's been going to Meetups and having people say "oh yeah I saw your meme, the government sucks, keep it up!" She bugs local politicans on Facebook, their ads keep popping up in her feed, so she'll ask them things like "do you think it's moral to seize someone's property when they can't pay their taxes?" which of course gets bullshit nonanswers from politicians. Nobody wants to say "I think it's moral to seize someone's house because they're behind on taxes".
An authoritarian government wouldn't like someone like my wife, and they certainly wouldn't want her getting likes on Facebook. After all, what if she DOES run for office? What if she wins? What if other people like her win?
She's talking about making taxation voluntary.
Which seems on the wrong side of crackpot to me.
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.
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.
Do you ever wonder why you have to make such hyperbolic analogies to even come close to a point?
Look at how the Amish were able to opt out of social security.
A lot of people decided, before you were born, that people living in your location would pay taxes. You or your parents chose for you to be subject to those rules when you moved there or were born. By continuing to live there, you subjected yourself to those rules. If you don’t agree, you can move somewhere else. However, part of those rules means you may have to give up something you value in exchange—citizenship, the right to vote on the rules, property, exit taxes, etc.
Unfortunately for you, there is no desirable place on this planet that doesn’t follow this “our land, our rules” approach. Most of them are very picky about who can be citizens. Luckily for you, you’re one of the privileged few who gets to live in one of the good places. (I presume, since you’re commenting here.)
You call taxes theft. I call NOT paying taxes theft—taking from the common good we and generations before us have all worked to establish.
In a nutshell, I didn’t find your arguments convincing. You weren’t able to express how your initial idea (don’t take property from people who don’t pay taxes) would work. Instead, you made it “work” with another, grossly impractical idea that we replace taxes with service charges. Your rebuttal to my concerns about that idea (inconvenient, regressive) was that other things are also inconvenient and regressive, as if that somehow excuses an idea from being inconvenient and regressive. You could have at least tried to argue it would be less inconvenient and regressive.
The cherry on the cake, though, was your championing HOA dues. Not only does that show a profound “let them eat cake” lack of awareness and empathy for people who struggle to make ends meet, it’s functionally equivalent to a tax! It’s a fee paid by a community to support the common good of the community. And do you know what happens to people who don’t pay HOA dues? Go on, look it up.
Yeah, you’ll get sued and your house could get foreclosed.
Your HOA is a just like a small government. If you have kids and they inherit your house, they will be subject to its rules, just like you are subject to the rules of your country. If they don’t like those rules, they can move out, just like you can. They might take a loss, just like you might.
Anyway, again, I appreciate you making an account and engaging civilly on this. I can’t imagine we’ll ever agree, so I’ll let you have the last word.