Taxes are the admission fees you pay for membership in society. If you want to live as a hermit, go right ahead.
I’m about as anti-tax as they come, short of a pure anarchist, but I think this argument is misleading. That is, laying taxes, especially income tax, on a specific purchase doesn’t make much sense. Consider that with income taxes, whether you buy a faucet, or a car, or nothing at all, you can’t avoid paying those taxes. I suppose sales taxes could make it seem more expensive too, but it’s still paying for other things, not the faucet, and whether you buy it or not, that money needs to be collected somehow to pay for those services.
So if you want to argue against taxation, argue about how tax money is being wasted, or how it’s taking money out of the economy, or the burden is on the wrong group of people, or that the wrong things are being taxed, or any number of arguments, but this argument is misleading.
Of course the one thing I wish they would do, which is similar to what perfectparanoia said, is a methodology of obfuscating taxation. I wish businesses would just build sales taxes into the prices of items. Of course, they won’t, because it makes their merchandise look less expensive, but it would be nice to see a total cost rather than a pre-tax cost. Really, other than being afraid of looking more expensive than other businesses that don’t do it, since you’re ultimately interested in the total cost, since that’s what you actually have to budget for, I don’t understand it isn’t common practice. Gas is sold this way, as are things that are paid for almost exclusively with cash (like concessions at the movies or sports venues). And, hell, I don’t want to be ignorant about it either, as it is my money, and I don’t want a phantom tax raise to go unnoticed, but they could easily show all that math on the receipt instead of making me do it in my head.
So people who don’t pay taxes aren’t members of our society?
Just don’t drive on any of our roads, build your hermit hovel on publicly owned land or use any services that are even partially funded by tax dollars. Don’t drink any water that comes from the reservoirs that we built. Don’t use any of the electricity from our power grid. Stay off of the internet. And don’t work for any business that sells goods or services that are purchased with tax dollars.
Or you could just quit whining and pay your taxes like everybody else.
People who willfully do not pay taxes that they owe are behaving in an antisocial manner, especially if they reap the benefits of other people’s taxes.
People who whine about paying taxes are tiresome.