Xanthippa's Chamberpot

When is the last time you went to a restaurant – and did not leave a tip?

Chances are – never.

Or the service was so poor, you were ‘making a point’…

Why?

Because we all understand that servers rely on tips for their income.

And we wish to encourage good service and so on and so on.

Nobody has the right to force you to tip.  You may not like the practice, but chances are, you still do tip ‘good service’.

This same principle also ought to apply to taxes!

Governments would be much more careful with their revenue if they did not usurp onto themselves the power to extort taxes from its citizens.  Any government caught in corruption (AdScam, e-Health,  Sewardship Ontario and on and on), that government’s revenue would dry up – and rightly so!

This, in my never-humble-opinion, is the best (if not only) means through which citizens can keep governments ‘honest’ and fiscally responsible!

Perhaps this sounds extreme – and perhaps it is.

Still, ask yourself why is it that ‘tax collectors’ have powers much greater than police officers or the military.  Why is it that in the name of ‘collecting taxes’, governments create personal files about each and every citizen, where they collect and access decades very private information?

Governments only have the powers we delegate to them.

If you do not have the right to do something, you cannot delegate that right to anyone else (including the government) to do it on your behalf.

You do not have the right to demand to know the financial details of your neighbour’s life.  Since you do not have it, you cannot ‘delegate’ this ‘right’ onto the government.  Therefore, demanding to know the details of our financial circumstances is not a power any government can legitimately exercise on behalf of its citizens.

Again, please ask yourself:  why is it that when governments cannot seem to catch ‘careful’ lawbreakers, they try to ‘get’ them on ‘tax evasion’?

That alone should make us pause.

I know this sounds extreme – it is meant to.

The reason I am raising this point is not because I am advocating any sort of a tax revolt – at least, not on a practical level.

Rather, I am saying is that we ought to think very hard about exactly how we got into the current state where we consider it ‘normal’ that the State suspends our civil liberties in order to take from us whatever amount of money it has unilaterally set.