The Ideas of Ownership Behind the Concept of Taxation
In thinking about our current legal tax system, questions of legitimacy are immediately raised. At their base, these theories of taxation lead to two fundamental theories of ownership.
One theory states that the root of ownership is the feeling that one is separate from rest of the universe. If different parts of the world are disconnected from each other, then the connecting of things through the process of ownership brings them to a higher state of being. In such circumstance a person who appropriates, a person who through productivity is able to bring things that are separated from each other into togetherness through the amassing of material wealth by ownership, should be regarded as a hero for bringing order into chaos. A person who amasses possessions through wealth does not owe the rest of the world, in fact, it could be said that the rest of the world owes him/her because they have created something out of nothingness; they have brought order and productivity where there was chaos and waste. Taking this view of the universe and of the amassing of property and wealth, one can easily see why taxation can be seen as illegitimate, may even as theft. It can be seen as repulsive that the unproductive masses use the state apparatus to usurp the hard work and productivity of those who have worked so diligently. Seen through these lenses, taxation can only be legitimize when it is done with the consent of the person being taxed and/or when the return on the amount taxed is indeed returned in in-kind services. But the rich, those who have amasses most wealth, argue that they pay more money into the system then they take out and this is inherently unfair. They might even go as far as to say that the rest of society owes them for the wealth and order they produce, because, through a trickle down effect, the unproductive ultimately benefited from their resourcefulness.
The conflicting theory is simply the reverse of the one stated. This theory states the theory of ownership is simply ridiculous. In this way of seeing the world, one has no rights only liabilities. We are simply guess on this earth. The oxygen we receive, the sunlight we consume, everything we use is owned by something bigger then us and that something, (called God by most), is the only true owner of all. We are part of this bigger thing, of this universe, and therefore we can not own. We owning anything, is a ridiculous as saying that my thumb can own something. My thumb can not own anything, because it is not an entity in its own right, in the same way, we can not own anything because we are only a miniscule part of that which is bigger then us. For this reason, when something that is “bigger then us” i.e. God or Society, asks us as individuals to give something, they are not asking is to give something that is ours, they are asking us to return something that we were temporarily allowed to barrow.
These are the ideas behind taxation. When we are tax, are we being asked to give up something that we owned, or are we being asked to return something to the true owner, something that that society allowed us to barrow?
