Joe asks Tom, “Did you pay your taxes yet?”

Tom responds, “What do you mean “your taxes.”? I don’t have taxes; I have my money. Taxes don’t belong to me. taxes are an amount of money the government says that I owe to it. But I haven’t borrowed from the government and I haven’t signed a contract for services received from them, such as arresting a drug user or prostitute across town who wasn’t bothering me or anyone else.

“Now, when the government arrests and prosecutes a murderer, do I owe it anything? It has done something good and proper and just, yes, but what is good and proper and just in saying that I must give it a certain amount of my money or I will be arrested and prosecuted? What, in the arresting of a criminal, takes some of my money out of my rightful possession and puts it into the possession of the govt.?

“So, you respond by saying that if the government didn’t have some of my money it couldn’t arrest that murderer and make the streets safer for me. Okay, but how does that fact give it the right to take my money and, by doing so, make my financial street less safe for me? If I see a man trying to break into your house to steal your money and I hit him over the head with a shovel and stop him, do I then have a right to take some of your money? Do you owe me your money? Would I expect you to be giving me money?

“Now, you might feel thankful and ask me over to dinner, but that would be voluntary on your part, and the amount and quality of the dinner would be your free choice. Where men of good will live together, this kind of voluntarism might well thrive. But that leads to the question: are taxes, enforced by fines and/or jail time, an expression of good will or of bad will?

Taxation, as an expression of bad will, means that the government regards citizens as bad, as evil; it regards those who support it, whom it depends on, as evil. Which, of course, means that it regards production, money-making, and hard work as evil. Taxation is anti-man.”

Joe, understanding, says, “So that means that government regards citizens as a necessary evil.”