Is Taxation Actually Theft?

There are arguments abound that taxation is theft, and thus wrong. There are tea-parties gathering and protesting taxation. The general ideology is that their hard-earned money is being taken and used without their permission and that they could do a lot more if they were allowed to keep that money in their piggy banks instead.

I decided to investigate this claim. While I do agree that taking taxes with the threat of legal action is wrong, and while I do agree that tax dollars can and are used for things the tax-payers disagree with (mainly military and TARP styled funds) do I actually believe that taxation, in and of itself is coercive theft? No, I don't. Generally speaking I believe that even if we were living in Anarchist communities, without governments, and even without capitalism, the people in the communities would still have to pool their resources in order to maintain a particular standard of living to be enjoyed by all. If we were to keep all of our resources only to ourselves we could not afford to do all of the things we need to do. So even in Anarchist communities - we would have a "tax" system, which is merely the use of pooled resources to benefit the entire community.

But I wanted some hard numbers to back up my theory. So I looked up, to the best of my ability, the average per person, per household, per KM and per acre cost for the most basic community benefits we use nearly everyday. Things like roads, sewage, waste collection, fire protection, and yes even police protection. Legal services, public schools, parks, and libraries. I excluded things like public transportation (buses, subways) and other tax funded things like government aid programs, military, overhead costs and local, state, and federal employees. I also excluded the post office - a system we all use everyday.

I then averaged the cost of these basic services, and compared it to the national average cost of taxes per person or household. I excluded the cost of gas taxes and sales taxes since many states do not have these taxes and/or the cost depends entirely on the user. Keeping in mind that my numbers are averages as they cost, per person or household, in a not-for-profit industry, That means that in order to keep things running everyone would still have to pay in, but paying in directly rather than through gathered taxation, and, to for profit companies rather than lower cost not for profit companies. Here is what I found:

On average:
Waste Disposal, including sewage and garbage pickup, and bulk disposal: $102 per household per year.
Public Schooling: $5,000 per year per student. Keeping in mind that private schools often charge upwards of $8,000 per year in tuition.
Fire Departments: $778 per household per year, data from larger cities.
Road Maintenance: $3,592 per KM, or 0.62 miles. So your neighborhood roads? very expensive, never mind the highways.
Legal Assistance: $3,000 retainer for 20 hours worth of work, based on a $300 per hour attorney rate.
Police protection: $584 per household per year. Granted, most people don't like the police, but I couldn't find an average price for a private security company. I'm assuming their rates are much higher.
Public Library: $41 per year per person, plus whatever fees they levy on you when you sign up.
Public Park/space Maintenance: $13,235 per acre per year. Even if you don't have large parks, there are many public spaces that need maintaining, and that adds up.

Total cost per household, on average, per year for basic access and use of public facilities: $26,332

Now, the average household income in the U.S. is $40,000 per year. The average federal tax is 18%. The average state income tax is 5%. The average property (real estate) tax is $2,000. At $40,000 per year your annual taxes are : $11,200. If you want to add on other property, sales, and gas taxes you'll have to take a guess as to how much that is. For us, it's about $500 per year, but we don't drive or buy much. All total you're looking at $11,700 in annual taxes.

Or rather, if you were paying out of pocket individually you'd be overpaying by approximately $14,632 every year.

How is this so, you ask? Well, with the negotiation power of collective bargaining, plus other non tax funds for all of these programs (such as private donations, fundraisers, and borrowing) you get everything you get everyday for $11,700 per year instead of a much costlier $26,332. And that's at not-for-profit rates.

I can't speak for anyone else here, but there have been years when my husband and I have only made $25,000 in a year. Even of we made $30,000 we'd only have a few thousand dollars left over to purchase shelter, food, and clothing.

With 91 million Americans living at, below, or just above the poverty threshold of $17,000 per year do you think that they could afford anything beyond waste management and shelter on this privatized system? No. No education, no legal, fire, or police protection, no medical aid (since 80 million of them are on Medicaid) and no access to roads, parks, or public spaces because if they can't contribute, they can't use it.

Looking at the costs, I'd rather just pay the damn taxes. Economically it's more logical.

But back to the question at hand: Is taxation theft? Since you get to use everything at your disposal for less then what it should actually cost per person, I'd say no, taxation is not theft. You might be a little bit of a thieve, though, if you consider using something you can't afford to pay for in full theft. For me personally, I don't consider that theft either, but rather a proper use of collective bargaining for the benefit of all people.