Tax

Overview

• Whether referred to as “taxation” or not, theft is always inefficient, destructive, and immoral, even when the thief uses the proceeds for worthy purposes.
• Justly transitioning to a world without taxation is an entirely different and vital discussion. We cannot abolish taxes overnight, but we should be clear that zero taxation is the goal to aim for.

Alternatives to taxation exist and can work

• Just because governments have continuously relied on taxation does not mean they must always operate that way, or alternative methods of accomplishing these essential goals could not possibly exist.
  • Keep in mind that people in the United States somehow survived, and even thrived, without the federal government imposing and collecting any income tax. It wasn’t until 1913 when the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified that the federal government first possessed the Constitutional authority to levy an income tax.

Transitioning to an abolition of taxation will take time

• The 3L Movement does not advocate immediately or recklessly abolishing all taxation.  Instead, the 3L Movement advocates for a careful, rational, fair, and steady transition, allowing time for alternative funding mechanisms consistent with the 3L Philosophy to effectively replace taxation without compromising any necessary services or benefits to people who are justly entitled to them.
• However, the 3L Movement applauds any responsible movement toward less taxation as a worthwhile endeavor that should continue until we realize our goal of responsibly eliminating all taxation.
• We must carefully transition to voluntary funding mechanisms to pay for vital services (like courts) and to pay off the earned and contracted benefits, pensions, and other unfunded government liabilities now entirely funded by taxation.

Applying the Legal Principle

• Of course, any person, group, or corporation peacefully earning money is the rightful owner of those funds.

Tax is theft

• No person, group, corporation, or government has a legitimate right to forcefully appropriate another’s money without their consent. Doing so initiates nonconsensual physical force against another person’s property. Civilized people agree theft is a crime. We all learn this rule as children.
• Theft remains wrong regardless of who or what entity is acting. It is true that most people remit their taxes without an actual initiation of nonconsensual physical force. However, this point is irrelevant because the underlying threat of force causes them to do so. This situation equates to coercion. People send their money because they fear the consequences if they don’t.
• Re-labelling the involuntary appropriation of another’s property as “taxation” instead of “theft” or “robbery” does not change the nature of the act. Taxation is taking another’s money without their permission. Such theft by any other name remains theft.
• If you believe taxes are voluntary, you could effectively test your conclusion by refusing to pay them. We do not advise this as you would be imprisoned for tax evasion. If you run this test, you will find out the hard way there is nothing voluntary about taxation.

Taxation and democracy

• Even if people hold a full, free, and fair election on the point, and the majority votes to approve the theft, any theft remains wrong. Does wrong become right if the majority agrees to engage in the wrong? What if most kindergarten kids fairly vote to take the toy of one of their classmates forcefully?

“Can’t you just leave the country?”

• That you are free to leave the jurisdiction does not change the analysis. That people are free to run away from a thief and thereby possibly escape the theft does not justify the theft for those victims who choose to stand their ground despite the option to flee. We wouldn’t want a kindergarten teacher to advise the children in class if they do not want their toys forcefully taken by the majority of other children, the proper solution is to move to a different class or leave the school.

“Don’t the ends justify the means, especially when taxing the rich?”

• Theft is still wrong, even when coercively appropriating based on a progressive graduated income scale to address wealth inequality. Even if we use the proceeds of the theft for essential charitable purposes, theft remains wrong nonetheless. Taxation is legalized theft on a governmental level.

“How would we provide essential services without tax?”

• Before the abolition of slavery, many slave owners, when confronted with the issue of ending slavery, similarly wondered who would pick cotton if the law abolished slavery. Slave owners argued that many other dire consequences would befall us if slavery were outlawed.
• Even if ending slavery would result in the cotton going unpicked and other harmful economic consequences, this would be no reason to continue the practice of slavery.
• We can achieve a peaceful, prosperous, and civilized world without taxation.

Applying the Aspirational Values

• Any breach of the Legal Principle is inherently a breach of the aspirational values too – aggressing, including taxation, is not voluntarily kind, thinking win/win, tolerant, civil or acting in high character.

Voluntary Kindness

• Acting as an excellent human, including voluntary kindness is essential for a virtuous society. Forced kindness is not. The cultural expectations of 3L is that members be voluntarily kind, in ways they define for themselves. By helping those less fortunate than ourselves, we mitigate some of the challenges from eliminating taxation.

People are generous

• We should have confidence in the willingness of civilized people to engage in voluntary kindness. Even with a heavy tax burden, the statistics demonstrate that humans have a high propensity for generosity. For example, in the USA:
  • Approximately 91% of households donate to charity (sources 1, 2, 3)
  • 67% of Americans donate to charity
  • Unsurprisingly, the richest people give the most. Warren Buffet, for example has pledged 99% of his fortune to charity, already donating $46.1bn.
  • 2% of USA’s GDP is consistently donated to charity. It’s likely this would rise significantly if taxes were eliminated, which would make Americans ~30% richer.

Giving increases as taxation falls

• As wealth increases, so does the amount given to charity. It is reasonable to expect the charitable giving to rise if people cease to be constant theft victims at the hands of governments.
• Further, the free markets that would result from a 3L society would raise standards of living, as all the restrictive laws that don’t align with the Legal Principle are removed. As living standards rise and people become wealthier, we should expect more people to voluntarily spend their money on the less fortunate. Additionally, in a growing free market of charities, we should expect more efficient charities, playing an even more critical role in absent of forced wealth distribution.
• As standards of living rise, as they always do in a free society, there will be fewer and fewer people who cannot afford essential services.
• Alternatively, governments could charge fees for use of their assets like roads, bridges or courts to help fund essential services.

Imagination is our limitation

• It is sometimes hard to image how services currently provided by government would be replaced by voluntary mechanisms. When the Soviet Union collapsed, a citizen there asked: “if the government no longer manufactured and sold shoes, how would it be possible for the free market to deliver shoes?” What was unimaginable to this Soviet citizen is obvious to us. Not only can private companies deliver services previously administered by the state, they do a much better job. Its hard for us to imagine things like national defence being voluntarily organised, just like it was hard for the someone to image shoe manufacturing to be voluntarily organised after the Soviet Union.
  • As an example to demonstrate how full privatisation could function, consider that Disney World is a private, for-profit amusement park where everything is privatized.
• There are many creative ways to voluntarily fund vital services. Not being able to image them yet should not be a justification to aggress against others.