Theft is an involuntary payment.
Taxation is an involuntary payment.
Taxation is theft - regardless of your motives or distribution ideas.
- Twitter User Name Withheld, 8th Jan 2023
It is amazing that I am still amazed when I read claims like this on the internet. A statement like this can only derive from someone's selfishness and by extension, their unwillingness to pay tax.
First, it is time for a definition.
"Theft" is the unlawful taking of property, rights, or claims, from someone else. Note the use of the word 'unlawful'. The concept of theft, relies on the fact that in the first instance a person has a legal right or claim to property, rights, or claims, at all.
The problem at the heart of this whether of not the claim that "taxation is theft" is true or not. The fundamental question here is whether or not the state has a legal claim to take property (in this case monies), lawfully or not. At least where I live in Australia, this legal claim is explicit in the Constitution which created the new legal person of the Commonwealth of Australia and the Crown therein.
The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
(ii) taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States;
- Section 51 (ii), Australia Constitution Act (1900)
The Commonwealth of Australia claimed the power to lay and collect taxation, which means that it has the legal power to do so; therefore taxation is not theft.
QED.
If this seems very bootstrappy, it is because it is. The state's power to state what the law is, is because the state has the power to state what the law is. I will readily admit that this 'because I said so' is a circular argument which relies on 'because I said so'; and yet that circular argument lies at the heart of every state, every nation, and even the replaceable rules and constitutions of companies. How is that?
The power to lay claim to and collect taxation and enforce law generally, is ultimately derived from the state's monopoly on force. This sounds like a scary concept until you realise that the state's monopoly of force is a more sensible idea than the alternative.
The monopoly of force, or the monopoly of violence, is the state's monopoly to exact punishment for transgression of the law. By placing the sole power of punishment for transgression into the hands of one legal person, then this is far more sensible than the democratisation of force and violence; which is nothing more than a war of all versus all. If there is no central authority, then everyone being free to do as they wish and given the fundamental selfishness of people, would result in force and violence being mustered by whomever could collect and control the most swords and guns.
This kind of fractured rule of law by whomever could collect and control the most swords and guns, has been repeated again and again throughout history and is only ever resolved when some kind of collective arrangement which creates a central authority is reached, or when someone is able to collect sufficiently enough swords and guns that they eventually subdue everyone else.
English Law is perhaps the most useful example of this in relation to Australia. England which was a series of tribes, was overrun by the Roman Empire starting in 63BCE, remained under the control of a central authority in Rome, before the Romans left and it again devolved into a tribal rabble, where whomever could control the most swords controlled the various regions.
Over the next 600 years or so, there was a coagulation of power, and various waves of other claimants of power, which eventually resulted an a unified England under Alfred, the whole thing being conquered by William, and the rule of law being consolidated into the Common Law under Henry II in 1154. English Common Law and then Statute Law is nothing more than a formal series of arrangements under which the monopoly of force is held by first the King and then the person of the Crown in trust.
In Australia, which where I live, the monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence, was first exacted by the Crown who encountered minimal resistance, and the six Crowns which made up the Six States, eventually decided to federate into a single formal arrangement called the Commonwealth, in which a new Crown was invented by legislation. The Commonwealth as agent for the Crown, still has that same monopoly of force and that same monopoly of violence; in addition to the Six Crowns of the states which ceded some of their responsibility but maintained their own monopoly of force and monopoly of violence, in as far as much as their own 'domestic' matters were concerned.
What does any of this have to do with taxation? Everything.
Ever since the invention of money, the authority of the state to issue little blobs of metal that they imposed was acceptable of payment for goods and services, was always backed by monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence. In the first instance, money was issued to soldiers in lieu of grain, meat, clothing et cetera, and it is because of the apparent usefulness and fidus which goes along with it, that anyone found those little blobs of metal worth anything at all. Intrinsically, even a gold coin is still only a little blob of a somewhat useless metal, stamped with the designs of an authority backed by monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence.
The authority to issue money, to lay claim and to collect taxation, ever since the invention of money, was always backed by the authority of the state and its monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence.
More generally, all law is ultimately derived from that same source. Civil and Legal law is ultimately derived from the state's monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence.
Moral Law is ultimately derived from god(s)' monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence. This is true for all religions. Monotheistic religions assume that that monopoly is held by God. Polytheistic religions assume that that monopoly is held by multiple gods. Nontheistic religions assume that that monopoly is not held by the person of some god but by the person who is the system; this person the same kind of person as the Crown. Atheists who claim that God does not exist, will also reject the idea that there is a Moral Law and that the general set of principles which exists is either because of their own moral code, or because of some collective system of mutual altruism.
Even the Laws of Nature, such as Gravity, Magnetism, Electricity, Physics, et cetera, are still ultimately derived from that same source, wherein nature itself holds a monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence. You have no ability to repeal the law of gravity; you can not change arithmetic; electricity, magnetism and physics, do not care if you believe in them or not. Mess with anyof these things and you will find out very quickly that nature's monopoly of force and monopoly of violence will always be exacted.
Taxation isn't theft because the state claimed the right to lay and collect taxation. That legal right is ultimately back by the state's monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence. It doesn't matter whether or not you consent to this at all. Unless you have the ability to collect and control the most swords and guns than the state, then there is no right not to follow the law.
Aside:
Perhaps the most famous piece of rhetoric and historical nonsense on this subject is from the United States' Declaration of Independence.
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,".
- United States Declaration of Independence, 4th Jul 1776
It is demonstrably nonsense. This document was written in 1776; after which, the United States as a collective spent seven years collect and control the most swords and guns than the previous state which ruled them. Again, this is not actually the "consent of the governed" in action but the use of swords and guns to establish a new monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence.
The only merit in any sovereign citizen argument is if that person and collects and controls more swords and guns than the state, establishes a new monopoly of force and the monopoly of violence, and thus by action, becomes the new Crown.
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