Is there a way to maintain a government without taxes?

Great Debates
1

A friend and I were having a talk the other day about starting our own political party and maybe trying to get some city council positions or something along those lines in our town. When the topic turned to our platform I suggested that we should have no taxes. He countered with how can you run a government without taxing the citizens. We both then came up with the following ideas:

1.Make taxes optional. If you choose not to pay taxes then you don’t get any kind of government assistance or intervention.

2.Let the people decide where their taxes can go-I’ve heard this idea before and it sounds alright, Put something on the tax forms to where you can pick and choose where you want your money to go.

3.People who make below a certain amount are not required to pay taxes or even file at all.

4.Abolish property and sales tax- government, whether it be local, state or national has no business in what you own and in commerce.

5.Don’t take taxes directly out of paychecks- Let the people pay at the end of the year on a sliding scale by how much they make. I don’t really understand why every paycheck I get has tax taken out of it and I still have to file every year. It looks like they already got the money.

6.The same rules apply for everyone-This means no corporate tax breaks, no breaks for the wealthy.(yes I realize this contradicts number 3 but when you get right down to it, poor people need the money they earned more than rich people do.
So anyways back to the original question, Could an organized government survive without taxing it’s citizens?

2

  1. Sorry, not as long as there are humans involved.

  2. This can work. No reason not to.

  3. We already have that.

  4. Spreading the taxes around- sales, property, excise, gas, income & estate- spread the burden around and lessens the chnace of cheaters and dodgers getting out of paying anything.

  5. This woudl just mean that 80% of the working public would get a tax bill they couldn’t pay on 4-15, rather than doing it less painfully. Witholding really is a great way of doing things. Really.

  6. Explain?

3

Cambodia doesn’t have taxes.

The government operates many of the indigenous industries.

There isn’t much representation without taxation. - Ha! You hadn’t thought of that had you?

4
  1. You have a big problem with this one. Only those who know they will need govenment assistance eventually would pay into the system but then turn right around and take more than they put in as their benefits.
  2. Might work on an extremely limited scale.
  3. Already have that.
  4. That is really a Great Debate by itself. Some people like sales taxes because they are similar to flat taxes and harder to avoid than income taxes.
  5. People have to file even after having their money withdrawn from their paychecks to settle up and make sure the proper amount was paid. There is an excellent chance that they will be getting a refund for some of it so it is in their best interest to file. Tax laws and individual circumstances change throughout the year so it is impossible to know the exact amount owed until the return is filed.
  6. That is a complicated proposal. Some versions of that have been proposed such as the “flat tax” rate.
5

I didn’t think you’d have my choice on the list, but damned if it wasn’t number 1!

6

So when your country is invaded by, oh, I don’t know, the Mongol Hordes, your government will only defend those who have paid taxes, eh? Gee, that should work well!

7

But that’s what it does now, isn’t it?

8

Only insofar as it’s almost impossible to live in this country without paying some kind of Federal taxes - if not income tax (too poor, for example), then at least some excise taxes buried in the cost of goods.

As clever as your observation is, of course, it doesn’t address the real-world problem of trying to defend a population selectively. Color me shocked, shocked!

9

How does that work? What about things like street cleaning? Overall the only thing I can envisage is that rich people don’t need to pay taxes as they can afford to have the majority of things done for themselves. Poor people can’t afford to pay the taxes, but now have no education, social services, etc, available because the government has no money coming in to pay for them. Explain why this would not be the case?

10

First you say that taxes are optional and later on say there will be no tax breaks for business or the wealthy. If the taxes are optional then who needs tax breaks, loop holes or whatever you want to call getting out of paying taxes? :confused:

11

Most government “assistance and intervention” comes pretty indirectly - how are you going to figure out who gets it and who doesn’t? As an example, how will you restrict the use of public highways only to the people who paid for them? How will the army only defend taxpayers?

One problem is that there’s often no relationship between the necessity of a government office and its glamour. Another problem is that many government services are most needed by people who have the least ability to pay for them. And a whole new problem would be a massive increase in lobbying - every government agency would have to spend a substantial portion of their budget on publicity campaigns to ensure their future budgets. You’d end up with a third of the budget being spent on “advertising costs” - a whole new source of government waste.

All of these are more alternative tax plans rather than plans for changing the amount of taxes collected.

One of the most seductive arguments in favor of socialism - let the government run businesses and pay for government services with the profits. The downside is that government businesses that have to use their profits on public services cannot compete against private businesses. The only way the sytem would work is for the government businesses to have a monopoly, in which case you’ve just created a way of hiding taxes.

12

Can’t find a site, but I think there are no taxes in Saudi Arabia – because the oil fields are state property and provide all the revenue the government needs. Can’t see how that could work in the U.S.

13

The problem with number two is that there are tons of vital government programs that no one really cares about. People will wonder why the hell they’re funding research for a disease they’ve never heard of. Also, people won’t fund programs they disagree with, which could leave certain unpopular but important programs underfunded. And people would get cold calls every waking minute suggesting that they allocate their taxes to creating an indoor rainforest in Idaho.

14

Actually, it is the smaller gulf states like Kuwait and Qatar that provide everything for their citizens and hire outsiders to do everything for them. It is a known fact that the citizens of these countries are unable to do anything productive or useful. They will be in serious trouble when the oil runs out. I believe Saudi Arabia has some citizens that don’t benefit from the oil revenues.

Back in their heyday Texas paid for the education of all their citizens with the money they got from oil rights. Alaska also gives its citizens tax breaks because of its oil revenues.

15

I’d love a state/town/country like that. I’d get a list of the citizens that didn’t pay taxes then rob them. No police protection, no use of public roads, no “public” utilities, sitting ducks I’d call them.

Oh and if citizens could allocate their own funs, what do we need to elect officials for?

16

And state taxes. And local taxes. And taxes on the taxes (check your phone bill). Taxes on things you buy, income you earn, gifts you receive, prizes you win, property you inherit, and mark-ups. (The cost of tax goes to COGS, and then profit is calculated from that.) And fees. And things with names like “titles” or “tags” or “licenses”. And payments that are forced indirectly, like an ordinance that requires you to hire an inspector before you purchase a house.

But you already defend the population selectively. Domestically, you defend the rich better than the poor. You defend Whites better than Blacks. You defend Democrats and Republicans better than you defend Libertarians and Independents (have a look at ballot access laws). Militarily, you defend those with lots of political clout better than you defend those without it. You take money from DC’s homeland security funds to finance inaugural festivities. You buy important people bunkers to protect them from nuclear war. You send your soldiers to fight wherever it might benefit the profits of government subsidized industries. And you prop up dictators wherever it might benefit your hegemony.

17

And they’d call you a corpse. Why do you think people couldn’t hire their own police, operate their own roads, and produce their own electricity? Our electrical supplier is a co-op, and we are shareholders. Our fire protection is volunteer, and of excellent quality. So is our garbage collection. The only thing that really sucks around here is the publicly “owned” road.

18

I’m not sure whether this is a purely theoretical debate (would such government work?) or a more practical one (the merits of the political party that you propose)… So I will ask a simple, practical question:

How would this political party defend against charges that its plan would virtually eliminate the police, fire department, public hospitals, schools, sewage treatment, and the repair of potholes?

If you believe that your party would, in fact, advocate drastic cuts in these popular programs and services, why would anyone (other than the highly ideological) vote for this party?

19

Not being a member of the LP, I can’t speak for them. But generally, the defense is a tough one because it involves both a denial and an explanation. They must first deny that they would eliminate schools and so on, because they wouldn’t. Then they must explain that, just because there is not a third party (government) brokering these services for you, it doesn’t mean that you would be denied the services. Like I said in my post above, I have garbage collection, and so does my friend in the city. Mine costs me about $30 a quarter, and as best we can figure, his costs him about $30 a month. My collector will pick up almost anything — furniture, boxes, garbage, yard trash, car parts, whatever. His will pick up only pre-approved items that are packaged a certain way and placed in a certain location. Sometimes, third party brokerage can result in higher prices and less service. Regarding police and courts and such, I think that the LP would include that as part of government’s obligation to secure rights.

20

Ignoring the question of how a government might function in a voluntary-taxation system (which is a fascinating hypothetical, but not a part of the main thrust here), I’d have to answer, No, it’s not possible to maintain a government without any taxation to fund its operation. But it’s quite possible to fund it without any intrusive taxes.

For the first hundred years of its existence, discounting the Civil War period, the U.S. government underwrote its cost by tariffs and indirect taxes of various sorts (look up 19th Century tax stamps for some background on what “various sorts” entailed). Under the Articles of Confederation, its revenue source was the states’ budgets, raised through taxation by them, but the U.S. proper did not tax.

Most people in the U.S. pay income taxes to the Feds., sales and often income taxes to the states, and property and sometimes added sales taxes to the local government(s). But odd things can happen.

The Town of Lee, N.Y., north of Rome, has a population something over 6,000, suburban and exurban in character, and including some shopping centers. It has a town government with a justice court system, parks, town roads that need plowing, etc. However, Oneida County, in which it’s located, adds its own sales tax to the state sales tax (it’s collected as a single add-on sum and then distributed appropriately) and does revenue sharing with its local governments according to taxes raised in and population of the municipality. And by careful budgeting, the Town of Lee has for over 20 years now been able to lay down a property tax levy of $0.00 per $1,000 of assessed valuation – i.e., there are no property taxes for the Town of Lee. (They do annually set a rate of zero, because at some point they may actually have to levy a small town property tax, and Lee residents do pay property taxes to the county and school district – but not to the town, as do most other town residents in New York State.)

Several states find it possible to operate without a state income tax, raising revenues through a variety of alternative sources.