To be sure, humanity is often tempted to value material possessions too much, and value the life of the heart and mind too little. But opposition to taxation is not mere crass materialism. Rather, by opposing taxation, one manifests an understanding of the fact that material goods, used freely by their rightful possessors, are the means to expressing the life of the heart and to expressing the life of the mind. To deprive a citizen of his property is to deprive a citizen of his freedom. Yet the government, the very purpose of which is to protect a citizen's life, property, and freedom, is guilty of denying the citizen his freedom when it divests him of his property.
Concrete examples show us that taxation is one utensil in the portfolio of oppression. Whether labeled as "tributes" or "user fees," governments use taxes to subjugate populations. Around 1240 A.D., the Mongols invaded and occupied southern Russia. As one textbook, World History: Patterns of Interaction (McDougal-Littell, 2007), describes it,
The Mongols demanded just two things from the Russians: absolute obedience and massive amounts of tribute, or payments. By and large, the Russian nobles agreed. Novgorod's prince and military hero Alexander Nevsky, for example, advised his fellow princes to cooperate with the Mongols. The Russian nobles often crushed revolts against the Mongols and collected oppressive taxes for the foreign rulers.
Oppressors usually find willing helpers - those who will harm their fellow countrymen in return for a sycophantic chance to gain favors from the tyrants. Whether Russian nobles willing to harm their fellow citizens, or bureaucrats working for the IRS, governments require and develop apparatuses - sometimes sophisticated ones - for collecting taxes. Perhaps one of the most notorious such systems was the "tax farming" system used in parts of the Roman Empire.
People generally despise tax collection agencies of all variations. Those Russian aristocrats who aided the Mongols did so by ruining their reputation among their fellow Russians:
During the 1320's, Moscow's Prince Ivan I had earned the gratitude of the Mongols by helping to crush a Russian revolt against Mongol rule. For his services, the Mongols appointed Ivan I as tax collector of all the Slavic lands they had conquered. They also gave him the title of "Grand Prince." Ivan had now become without any doubt the most powerful of all Russian princes. He also became the wealthiest and was known as "Ivan Moneybag."
The situation of the Mongols in Russia is one among many examples of the tension between the legitimate need for a government to have some small source of funds for its legitimate activities on the one hand and its illegitimate tendency to expand its revenues and activities beyond the practical minimum. How can a society allow its government to levy some small tax, and yet ensure that the government's greed does not cause it to tax more than the least feasible amount? This question, in varied forms, arises for every civilization. The ability to answer this question is the key to that civilization's survival. Senator Goldwater writes:
We all have heard much throughout our lifetimes, and seen little happen, on the subject of high taxes. Where is the politician who has not promised his constituents a fight to the death for lower taxes — and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible? There are some the shoe does not fit, but I am afraid not many. Talk of tax reduction has thus come to have a hollow ring. The people listen, but do not believe. And worse: as the public grows more and more cynical, the politician feels less and less compelled to take his promises seriously.
The senator goes on to distinguish between the false notion that a government has an "unlimited claim" to the property and income of its citizens and the plausibly true proposition that a government might have some limited claims on its citizens. Given the reality of the world as it is - imperfect - and the reality of human nature as it is - also imperfect - we must acknowledge that government is, in the words of Thomas Paine, a necessary evil. If government is necessary and the world imperfect, then taxes will also be necessary. Although necessary, they must be strictly limited and held to the lowest conceivable minimum.
We have been led to look upon taxation as merely a problem of public financing: How much money does the government need? We have been led to discount, and often to forget altogether, the bearing of taxation on the problem of individual freedom. We have been persuaded that the government has an unlimited claim on the wealth of the people, and that the only pertinent question is what portion of its claim the government should exercise. The American taxpayer, I think, has lost confidence in his claim to his money. He has been handicapped in resisting high taxes by the feeling that he is, in the nature of things, obliged to accommodate whatever need for his wealth the government chooses to assert.
When the government confiscates people's money and property, it also reduces their freedom. Whether in Mongol-dominated Russia or in twenty-first century America, resistance to taxation is a defense of freedom. From the Magna Carta to the English Bill of Rights of 1689, from the First Continental Congress to the Second Continental Congress, thinkers who have coherently advocated liberty have, as a corollary, consistently sought lower taxes.
