With reference to the current Stage 3 Tax cuts which the Albanese Government is being held over a barrel to deliver by the stridently selfish right-wing media, one of the frequent justifications for this is that the government taking 'our money' off us. This assertion is never challenged because to even ask the question of "Why doesn't the state have the right to claim back money that it has issued?" is to become the target of ridicule.
I find this assertion being almost always treated as fact as absurd as saying that there are three planets which go around the sun, that the sky is is purple, and that kangaroos go merrily bouncing across the Pacific Ocean.
This unchallenged assertion that it is unfair to take people’s money off them, is then weaponised by saying that it is unfair to take people’s money off them by force, to then pay for something they may not want. Be it education, funding for the arts, and especially the demonsation of welfare, this is used to build massive amounts of resentment and then use that resentment to rally support for ever anemically smaller government.
Without any kind of language and thought to challenge this asserted orthodoxy, even people on the economic left will refer to taxation and appropriation of money as 'our money'. The justification by the left is that taxation makes things which are bought in Commonwealth possible, as though the collective project of Commonwealth is some kind of extended charity. In other words, we give up 'our money' for the greater good of society.
Again, I find this equally problematic. As the issuer of currency, it doesn't even matter which theory of money that you hold to, ultimately the only reason that money has inherent value at all is the reasonable expectation that the state can issue and destroy it through taxation.
The second thing that I find problematic is that central plank that any money is in fact 'your money'. Prima facie feeling suggests that being paid a wage, or dividends, or rent, for work that you have performed is just. This implies that money in fact represents something which is owed to you by right. If this is true, then the competing claim by the state is taking away something which aught to be yours by right. Feelings are not facts and even just scratching the surface on this claim reveals that practically everyone in the world shares an this universal assumption.
It is a useful and practical fairy tale but it is not really true. Ultimately, you do not have an absolute right to your pre-tax income.
As the basic question. What kind of right do you think you have? Is it a Legal Right? This is very easily proved as a nonsense. Is it a Moral Right? Again, this is another nonsense. We have need to do some mental work to sort this out.
Very clearly the state has the Legal Right to claim and lay taxation. A Legal Right is a thing allowed or conferred by law and since the state not only has the power to write law but also the power to write law with regards taxation, then very clearly you do no have an absolute right to your own pre-tax income if you are legally duty bound to pay tax on it. The state can also impose penalty and even gaol sentences for people who do not pay tax.
If there is not an absolute Legal Right to own's pre-tax income the there must be a Moral Right, right? Wrong. How can you possibly claim a Moral Right, when the distribution of pre-tax incomes that the market determines is not perfectly just. Is it perfectly just that someone working in the Finance Department of a bank gets many many times more than the scientists who worked on finding a vaccine for COVID, or working to find a cure for cancer. Is it perfectly just that the CEO of a corporation should get paid hundreds of times the pre-tax income of the people who actually do the work to generate the income for the corporation?
The problem here in suggesting that there is a Moral Right to people's pre-tax income is to suggest that the results that the market just happens to throw up is perfectly just and this is very clearly a lie. The market itself is an amoral beast, populated with amoral actors, who act in decidedly immoral ways. To hold that there is a Moral Right to pre-tax income given all of this, would require the market exactly delivers to people exactly what they deserve and this is also very clearly a lie.
Maybe by sheer coincidence there are examples where the market delivers to a person exactly the pre-tax income that they deserve but I would suggest that this is a rarity rather than normal. Before you start lashing me to a pole and demanding that I be flogged, let me ask you the question. Are you paid exactly what you deserve? I have no doubt that you would tell me that you have worked hard for that money, or made efforts which demand rewards, or that you have talents and skills which you have honed which other people do not have, but the awful truth is that other people can claim exactly the same thing. An imperfect and often deliberately unfair system can not deliver just results. It is almost guaranteed that the pre-tax income that you have been paid, is not fair when compared to what other people get; especially those who have been underpaid and have their incomes effectively stolen from then before they see it or those who are paid an obscene amount of pre-tax income.
It then becomes a matter of responsibility and duty for the state to show utter disdain and disrespect to people's pre-tax incomes. If the mechanism for distributing those pre-tax incomes is not just, then the state which should have a duty to justice, has the responsibility and duty to correct that moral failure of distribution. Anyone who tries to demand that lowering taxation in order to give people more of 'their money' has already lied because they have taken the assumption that the market was perfectly just in delivering it in the first place. You can not hold up a moral argument, when the assumption that you have used to get there was already amoral and immoral.
The suggesting that your pre-tax income is the money you deserve, is itself a lie. Granted there may be practical reasons to respect the fads, fancies, whims, and wishes, or the market because of practical necessity in laying and collecting taxation but the state has absolutely no moral reason to respect the whims of the market. Any politician or political pundit who propagandises that it is a good thing, in and of itself, to give people more of their 'own money' is either confused, or a liar.
The imposition of taxation and the collection therein, stems from the virtue of commutative justice. Forget any notions of a presumed social contract between the individual and the state, or even the provision of services provided in commonwealth by the state. Taxation is an obligation of the state to provide justice, in the face of an amoral and immoral market.
If anything, taxation is just another cost of doing business and therefore individuals and firms actually owe the state and all the citizens in commonwealth a fiduciary responsibility to pay it. Businesses that manipulate the tax rules to reduce or avoid paying tax impoverish the society in which they operate both financially and ethically. The payment of tax should be properly viewed as the price for gaining access to society. If you don't like it, then you should get the heck out of the country immediately.
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