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0% compulsory taxation. Why does everyone assume that it has to be compulsory?

• pjc50 11y ago
  Voluntary taxation is not a thing. That's called a donation.
  • duncan_bayne 11y ago
    No, not at all, because a donation generally doesn't get you something in return (say, citizenship or the right to vote). Imagine a country run entirely on a voluntary poll tax. You literally pay in order to vote. The last time I ran the numbers (along with the now-defunct Libertarianz party), it'd cost around $2.5k per working person to run core Govt. services in New Zealand on that basis, assuming 100% buy-in. That's not a donation, exactly, but it's not compulsory taxation either.
    • pjc50 11y ago
      Government by the wealthy for the wealthy, as Lincoln didn't say. Might want to look at the history of poll taxes and especially property qualifications.
      • duncan_bayne 11y ago
        Wealthy? $2.5k isn't exactly a lot, if you consider that that was the entire tax burden we were planning for. As in, $2.5k tax in total, for everything. Sure, poll taxes and similar have been used to exclude all but the wealthy from Government. Many types of legal structure can be misused: gun control laws to disarm black people in the face of the KKK, union laws to prevent non-white people from getting decent jobs, etc. etc. But it's not a given. Edited to add: and especially when you consider that the so-called 'sin taxes' that particularly burden the poor would be eliminated under that scheme.