BluberryPoptart said:
Should I be able to refuse to pay taxes because I don't like the way the government chose to spend my money?
In my opinion, yes.
A system of taxation where people only pay for that which they approve of? I can hardly believe no politician has proposed this before! No wait, I can believe it, because such a system would be impossible.
Let's start with the most obvious problem: once you make taxation optional rather than compulsory a large percentage of citizens are going to simply stop paying any taxes. Without taxes we have no public schools, no police force, no roads, no firefighters, no national health service, none of which matters very much since without taxation we have no local or national government to run those services.
Perhaps you think taxation should still be compulsory, but people should be able to refuse to pay for particular government programs which they disagree with. Congratulations, you've just created a taxation system which costs more money than it raises.
I don't want to pay for anything to do with the military, so how much money do I subtract from my taxes? How about if I only want to refuse to pay for the military to be involved in Iraq, I don't mind paying for the armed forces in general, just not for this war. How much do I subtract now? How about if I just don't like the use of depleted uranium, how much should I subtract in order to be sure I'm not paying for that? My neighbour doesn't want to pay for public schools, he thinks they're a waste of money when you consider how many people leave without any qualifications. How much money can he subtract? How about my boss, she has private health insurance so she doesn't see why she should pay for the NHS. How much money should she subtract? How about the anarchist I went to college with, according to him governments are inherently oppressive so he disagrees with every government program. Can he refuse to pay anything in taxation?
Can you even begin to imagine the administrative nightmare that the system you're advocating would be? It would be a system of such complexity that you'd need tens of thousands of employees just to figure out how much each person should be paying in tax. The cost of collecting taxes would be so high that there wouldn't be any money left to pay for the programs they were supposed to fund in the first place.
Here's another problem: how do you decide whether a person is really objecting to a particular government program or is just trying to avoid paying their taxes? How strongly do you have to object to something before you can refuse to pay for it? I'm not wild about the police having the power to impose a curfew on people under the age of 16, should I refuse to pay for that, or can I only refuse to pay for things which I really passionately object to? Should people have to prove that they've always objected to particular program and aren't just trying to avoid paying taxes, or should the government just take their word for it?
While the idea of only paying taxes to fund those programs you approve of might at first glance seem desirable, as soon as you start to think seriously about the practicality of such a system it becomes clear that it's impossible.
Idiotic politicians.
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