US Senator Jeanne Shaheen (NH) recently sent out an email titled “Tax Day Should Be Simple”.
Let’s dissect the title of this email. Most people understand “Tax Day” to mean that day of the year by which one is supposed to fill out a stack of documents stating how much money one earned in the previous year, and then after a series of calculations, one discovers they have either had too much money taken from them – and will receive a refund – or they discover they supposedly didn’t have enough taken from them – and will be required to send in payment to cover the amount the IRS claims is owed. “Should be” can either mean “an obligation” or “what is probable”, either definition works here. The sticky word in the title is “Simple” which is defined as “easily understood or done; presenting no difficulty.”
One thing that is easy to understand is that taxation is theft by another name. Some will argue that governments provide services and the taxpayers are simply paying for those services. That, however, is a flawed argument since most of the so-called services are being provided without consideration of whether or not anyone actually wants the service being provided. This would be akin to someone mowing your lawn and pruning your hedges, without your prior consent, demanding payment, and suing you for theft of services when you refuse to pay. This would rightly be considered a form of extortion, if not outright theft, and no one would rightly claim the homeowner was stealing services if they refused to pay for the unwanted lawn maintenance. Now ask yourself: is a mugger is being paid by his victims? Is the mugger still a thief if he donates the money to charity after stealing it from you and taking a small percentage for himself? How is any of this different when the mugger wears a badge that says “Tax Collector” and tells you the money will go to pay for (fill-in the blank service) that you may or may not even want?
Let’s go back to the headline of that email and ask ourselves: Should Tax Day be simple? I say “Yes” with the caveat that “Tax Day simply should not exist, because Taxation is Theft, and theft should not exist in a civilized society!”