I think this is mostly a US-centric thing. In Europe taxes tend to be much higher and people mostly acknowledge that they are a necessary evil and when used appropriately they are good. How do you fund good roads, public illumination, universal healthcare, publicly-funded schooling, etc without everybody chipping in?
Sure, there are many discussions about how much people pay, about tax evading, about whether the systems in place are the fairest, etc. but in general from my experience (and personal opinion) they're not seen as theft.
Public goods can be _very_ efficient, even if inefficient in their delivery. I would have trouble believing that an educated citizenry is not a good thing, for example.
So although taxes are evil, they can be outweighed by a _much_ greater good.
But, also, wasted public spending is a great tragedy.
From this, I arrive at a left-Libertarian point of view: we should limit what the government does as well as we can to those things that are clearly better than the evil of the taxes involved, while it is still I think true that social welfare is compatible with this view.