THE TRUTH ABOUT TAXES

Published in the Daily Post Athenian in April 2025.          

  It’s that time of year again, the one as certain as eventual death itself. Individuals are huddled over piles of receipts next to home computers, desperately trying to beat the IRS filing deadline. Meanwhile, city and county government officials are also cloistered together, meeting late into the night, figuring out how they’re going to spend tax dollars next year. As surely as the East Tennessee spring brings raging allergy attacks, tax season (and budget time) is here.

            It’s such a part of modern American life that we don’t think about it much. Oh, we give it thought. We spend a lot of brain power as we frantically fill out forms, hoping to avoid that dreaded “you’re being audited” letter. We make sure we do the annual pilgrimage to city hall or the county courthouse when the property tax bill comes in. Sometimes, we may even take a few seconds to glance at the receipt from our most recent purchase, offering a slight shake of the head as we realize how much of the bill went to the taxman.

            But we don’t think about it. It’s rare that we deeply consider the philosophical consequences behind the practice. When elected officials sign off on budgets or local citizens advocate to include their own causes in it, we clearly don’t consider the inescapable truth. At the end of the day, taxes are an individual’s property, taken and redistributed by force.

            The standard fare of taxes are income tax, property tax and sales tax. Most people pay these voluntarily. With income taxes, many of us even fill out the paperwork on our own, voluntarily reporting what we earned by the sweat of our brow that particular year. But what happens if we simply say “no thanks.” What happens if we’d prefer not to support a particular cause that the government is giving our money to? There’d be a lot of cajoling, some letters and such, maybe even some court appearances.  Eventually, though, the money would be obtained by force. The tax withholder would be put in jail. In the case of property taxes, the city or county would get a court order seizing the tax-scoff’s home. If the tax avoider refused to pay up or get out, law enforcement would be sent in to evict them. Resisting this could result in a trip to the local jail.

            That’s an obnoxiously extreme example, but it’s true. While most people volunteer to pay their part voluntarily, the system ultimately works because we all know that the consequence of force awaits if we don’t. That’s the way any law the government passes actually works.

            Lest the reader think I’m against taxes, I’m not. Laws, governments and the taxes to fund them are a necessary part of an ordered, civil society. There are certain things in a civil society that will never (because of their nature) be provided for by the free market. We must have public safety agencies, but it wouldn’t work to create a business for this. Such an entrepreneur would go broke in a month. We need roads, but no one is going to step up and build them if everyone else can use them for free. These types of services are called public goods, and a government is morally justified in taxing its citizenry to provide them.

            No, I’m not against taxes. My concern is the way they’re spent. When a local government levies a tax, they’re taking money from citizens by force. They’re giving it to another group, individual, cause or project, whether the original owner of the money likes it or not.

What if elected officials asked themselves “is this essential enough to take money by force from someone?” before they approved each item in a budget? There are lots of “good” causes, projects and ventures that government supports. But not every person who is being forced to pay for it may support it. Given that truth, is it essential enough to take a free person’s property to pay for it?

When an elected official puts something in a budget, they’re spending other people’s money. That reality should animate all of their budget decisions. It should lead to budget’s that avoid all but the most essential things.

The truth about taxes is that they’re money taken by threat of force. This doesn’t mean government is bad or that taxes should go away. Still, as elected officials meet to build annual budgets, they should consider this truth in each decision they make. If they do, next year’s budgets might look very different.