Forgive me for the TL;DR post.

In this post, I will argue that taxation is not theft, as many libertarians and anarcho-capitalists argue. And even if it were, it would be a perfectly legal and ethical form of theft. For simplicity’s sake, I will put both libertarians and anarcho-capitalists under the term “libertarian.”

The libertarian argument against taxation is as follows:

Premise 1: Taxation is theft
Premise 2: Theft is wrong (implied)
Conclusion: Taxation is wrong (implied)

Let’s examine both premises.

Premise 1

According to FindLaw:

The term theft is used widely to refer to crimes involving the taking of a person's property without their permission.

Going by this very basic definition, taxation could certainly be theft. After all, taxation does involve the government taking your money regardless of whether or not you give it permission.

However, the important word here is “crime” which is defined by FindLaw as conduct that is prohibited and has a punishment prescribed by the law. Because taxation has no punishment prescribed by law, it can’t be considered a crime, and therefore is not theft.

Premise 2.

Still this doesn’t seem right. We often talk about theft in situations where there are no laws against them. After all, there were no laws against the taking of Native American land during Europe’s colonial days, but we still talk about Europe “stealing” (i.e., committing theft against) Native American land.

So, let’s just assume that the first premise is true and move onto the second.

Because this premise is often implied, libertarians are rarely (if ever) clear on what they mean by “wrong.” Are they talking about moral wrongness or legal wrongness (i.e., is it illegal)?

The two are obviously not the same. It is morally wrong for me to cheat on my wife, but not illegal. Conversely, it would be illegal for me to help a slave escape in the antebellum South, but not immoral (one could even argue it would be morally obligatory).

Legal Wrongness

Let’s assume “wrong” refers to legal wrongness. If that’s the libertarian’s argument, then she’s incorrect. The Constitution clearly states that the government can tax.

Section 8. Clause 1. The Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

Perhaps the libertarian could argue that this is just legalized theft (remember that we’re assuming, simply for the sake of argument that Premise 1 is true), but I would counter that legal theft is still legal.

Moral Wrongness

That leaves us with the second meaning of “wrong.” This argument is certainly the more convincing of the two. It seems obvious that taking a person’s possessions without his permission is wrong.

But is it always wrong to take someone’s possessions without her permission? I would argue that it isn’t.

For example, if someone acquires his possessions by immoral means, it is not wrong to take them from him using immoral means. If I knowingly bought a stolen stereo or bought a stereo with money that I knew was stolen, it would not be immoral for someone to steal that stereo from me. I think most of us can agree with that.

Taxation allows us to have our possessions. Taxation not only allows us to have the money we need for possessions but allows us to pay for the police officers and legal system that protects said possessions. This is just one example of how taxes allow us to have possessions. I could cite others if asked to.

If taxation creates the conditions necessary for us to have possessions, this would require the libertarian to concede that possessions are acquired through means helped by theft. And if it is morally permissible to steal those things that have been acquired through theft or whose acquirement was helped by theft, it is morally permissible for the government to use theft —i.e., taxation — to get them.

This does not mean that all taxation is morally permissible. There may be other reasons taxation or a tax is wrong. For example, if a tax drove people into poverty, or if it were unfairly placed on some but not others, we could argue it is wrong.

But I am not here to argue that all taxation is justified; I am simply arguing that the moral wrongness of taxation does not come from it being theft.

I would therefore dispute all of the libertarian premises leading to the conclusion that taxation is wrong. However, even if taxation could be considered theft, that would not necessarily force the conclusion that taxation is wrong, either morally or legally.