Community Assistance
In a previous post, I explained that a common anarchist argument against taxes fails. But that does not mean that taxes are moral. It just means that one argument against taxes fails. This is my positive argument for taxes (or something like them). I will say upfront that this argument does not justify the taking of any tax whatsoever. Nor does it mean that taxes ought to be paid in all circumstances. All that this argument proves is that taxes are sometimes moral. Taxation is sometimes justified because there are cases when the common good requires taking money from the populace in order to preserve the natural goods that give rise to ownership rights. Let’s suppose that there is a community of a few hundred people that are isolated from any other community. Let’s further suppose that this community has one rich person who has barns full of enough food to feed everyone in the community (including himself) with enough …
Are Taxes Moral?
One of the arguments against the existence of special government powers – such as the power to tax – is that taxing is no different from theft. Since theft is wrong, so is taxing. A careful examination of this argument shows that it assumes that there is no moral difference between an individual under government and an individual without government. There is good reason to believe that this assumption is false, and that taxation is sometimes morally acceptable if our relationship with the common good of our society must be fair. The argument against the morality of special government powers claims that if I (as a person in society) protected my neighbors from criminals I could not demand that they pay me for the service. I could not take money from them if they refused to pay, nor could I kidnap them until they did pay. If I did any of these things, I would be acting immorally. I agree. …