The state is not your adversary. Taxes weren't invented to harass and punish you. This exact type of thinking is why we have this problem.
Taxes are routinely used to punish and influence people. Alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, fuel taxes, they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit.
That's your choice. You could also see it as paying your dues, or even as doing your part in maintaining your society. The optimal attitude is probably somewhere between those views.
> Taxes are routinely used to punish and influence people. Alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, fuel taxes, they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit.
Well, that's the point of having a state. It's often a good thing, especially in the examples you mentioned. One of the most important function of a state is to serve as a coordination enforcer - in situations when people, out of their self-interest, would predictably chose something that aggregated over the entire population leads to bad outcomes for everyone, the state is there to alter the incentive landscape and make sure they chose the better thing.
I'd like it if taxes were earmarked by the people filing their returns. Say that there's a number of categories that you can assign percentages to.. defense, education, etc. An unpopular war? The people withhold defense funding. You get the idea - a lot more representative of the will of the people.
My duty is only to pay the minimum amount I am legally obliged to pay. Not one cent more.
Well, that's the point of having a state.
That is only one point of view.
Some people feel the purpose of the state is to protect us from ourselves. I subscribe to the belief that the purpose of the state is to protect us from each other.
Namely, if I want to knowingly ingest poison (tobacco, alcohol, heroin or even drain cleaner), it's my decision to make. If someone wants to surreptitiously lace wine with antifreeze and distribute it to others, the purpose of the state is to stop/punish them.
You have a legal and a moral duty. Would you say it is moral of Facebook to pay (virtually) no corporation tax in the UK whilst benefiting from things like the NHS providing healthcare for its workers?
Facebook also collects VAT and pays VAT in every country where it is generated, including UK.
And I don't know about UK corporate building taxes, but in Spain every company pays local taxes depending on the size of their buildings.
So little corporation tax is quite different from no tax.
Do those employees, who are based in the UK, pay taxes on their income?
How much you are obligated to pay is the point of contention. Ideally, everyone pays taxes proportional to the amount of benefit they get from public services, programs and infrastructure, so that those things can be maintained. The issue with tax-dodging is that it sidesteps this moral imperative by taking advantage of a legal loophole.
Governments are amoral entities. I'll clarify because the last time I said this, it was misinterpreted...
Governments pass, enforce and obey laws. It is beyond the scope of government to determine morality.
It's not legal for a group of us to say "Give us $X percentage of your income, under these rules, or else we'll send men with guns to take you away." but it's perfectly legal for a government to do it. Morality isn't the concern here, legality is.
Correct, but paying the appropriate amount for the services and programs you benefit from IS a moral matter. Taxes simply happen to be the avenue through which this is accomplished.
If you consume X dollars of government services and infrastructure, you should pay X dollars in taxes, regardless of whether loopholes exist through which you can pay less. Because if you pay less, you are doing two things: passing the tax burden on others, AND causing harm to the services and programs. Both of these are immoral. Therefore, not paying your fair share (note that I didn't say "legal share") is immoral.
You know how there are certain actions that aren't illegal, but are clearly against what's called "the spirit of the law"? This is one of those situations. Tax breaks are always created to encourage certain actions or facilitate certain results (e.g. Growth in a certain sector) but others figure out how to take advantage of them through creative accounting practices. That's when a tax break becomes a loophole. It's basically hacking the system.
Fairness is subjective. Morality is subjective. Legality is objective.
It's not "fair" that 51% of people get to decide which services to provide, how much to pay for them, under which conditions to provide them, then use force and the threat of force to compel the other 49% of people to pay for it.
I didn't ask for these services. I have no moral obligation to pay anything for them and I have no legal obligation to pay anything more than the law requires.
We don't legislate morality.
It's basically hacking the system.
Agreed and it's not immoral to hack the system.
The state has every advantage. The state can write the laws. The state can interpret the laws. The state has men with guns to enforce the laws.
Even with all of these advantages over the individual, sometimes the state doesn't come out on top. That's a failure of the state, not the individual.
If you write the rules in your favor, interpret the rules in your favor and enforce the rules in your favor, it rings hollow when you cry that it wasn't fair that the little guy beat you using the rules that you wrote, interpreted and enforced.
There isn't much that is subjective about paying the appropriate amount for the services and programs you benefit from. If you disagree that you should pay $5 for a cup of coffee that costs $5, then we have some very fundamental differences and can't come to any agreements in this debate.
>>We don't legislate morality.
On the contrary. Murder is illegal because we have decided as a society that killing people without just cause is immoral.
>>I didn't ask for these services.
But you still benefit from them, either directly or indirectly. A homeless shelter benefits you even if you aren't homeless, because it takes care of the homeless and makes it a lot less likely for them to commit crimes for survival. A fire department benefits you even if your house isn't on fire, because they put out fires in neighboring buildings and prevent them from spreading to and burning down yours. You are part of a society, and taxes are required to maintain the proper operation of that society, whether you have asked for it or not.
Again, you used a subjective term "Appropriate".
You are attempting to present subjective opinions as objective facts. They are not.
If you disagree that you should pay $5 for a cup of coffee that costs $5, then we have some very fundamental differences and can't come to any agreements in this debate.
If I feel that $5 is too much for a cup of coffee, I am free to not buy it. To adopt the statist's mentality and apply it to commerce, one could argue that since people need jobs and Starbucks pays their employees well, it is a societal good for Starbucks locations to be profitable and therefore, everyone should have to pay for Starbucks coffee, whether they drink it or not.
I reject this notion.
On the contrary. Murder is illegal because we have decided as a society that killing people without just cause is immoral.
The state regulates homicide, not for moral reasons but for reasons of social stability. No prohibition on homicide would lead to mass scale killings and retaliations.
A fire department benefits you even if your house isn't on fire, because they put out fires in neighboring buildings and prevent them from spreading to and burning down yours.
Where I live, fire departments are volunteer organizations that are funded by donations. I donate to them because I believe that the service they provide is worth my money.
You are part of a society, and taxes are required to maintain the proper operation of that society, whether you have asked for it or not.
My obligation to supply those funds is determined by the law and I'm only obliged to pay the minimum required by law.
I pay my taxes, not because I have a moral obligation to do so. I pay my taxes because I have a legal obligation to do so. In other words, if I don't the state will send men with guns to take me away.
All of the homeless shelters, fire departments and police officers in the world are worth less to me than my freedom.
I don't understand what's wrong with this generation. I look around and see people hell bent on destroying the system that brought them up. If you really don't like state that much, move to Somalia, and let those of us who like it enjoy civilization.
That's alright. Not everyone has to share my view.
You seem to view the state mostly as an enemy, a higher power you need to fight to extract some goods for yourself.
I have to take exception to two of the terms used here. The state isn't a higher power, it does have greater power.
I do not wish to extract anything from the state, I wish to maintain what is already mine.
Others, like me, tend to view the state as their friend, or at least a helpful entity with occasional personality problems, but generally friendly.
Like fire, the state can be a powerful servant or a terrifying master.
I don't understand what's wrong with this generation.
With all due respect, you do not know to which generation I belong.
I look around and see people hell bent on destroying the system that brought them up.
The system didn't bring me up, my family did.
If you really don't like state that much, move to Somalia, and let those of us who like it enjoy civilization.
I do not leave for the same reason that your love of overbearing government hasn't lead you to move to North Korea. I like it here.
I'm doing my level best to keep statists from destroying this republic the way they did Somalia. I'd suggest that you learn how Somalia got to be in the condition that it now finds itself.
Here's an abridged version of the events... https://www.facebook.com/bruce.fenton.page/photos/a.37280974...
I second enraged_camel's response. He described it better than I can.
That sounds very convoluted. If you want to charge proportional to usage, why not just charge for usage?
The fact that you earn anything at all, or that you don't get robbed, or that you have any property rights at all, is a function of the state. I'm sure you consider the state your ally for those reasons.
The state would publish a simple tax table, if people just followed it without going into legal word games and battles over verbiage and what the word "income" means.
>they all have the dual purpose of raising revenue and discouraging behavior that the state wishes to limit.
The state limits the behavior that they have been elected to limit. Occasionally, such limits get repealed when the citizenry chooses that they no longer wish to have that behavior be controlled.
The reason I earn is because I provide value for my employer. The fact that I don't get robbed, the same reason I have property rights, is a function of my readiness to beat the shit out of anyone stupid enough to try it. The state didn't show up to my job interview, and the state doesn't have my back when I'm walking the city at night.
The best the state can do is not screw up my contributions to society or property rights- they are derived from my own self, not some organizational structure that humans came up with so we could survive without learning how to respect each other.
Obviously, if these allowances are to the disadvantage of the state (and the society at large), politics should remove them. But blaming the companies for using them in the meantime seems to be barking up the wrong tree to me.