No-one likes paying taxes.  Well, maybe if you are an employee of the IRS, or whatever the taxation department is called in your country, you might like paying taxes because they keep you in a job. 

Which reminds me that a few years ago in Australia, the chief government minister responsible for the nation’s finances was humiliated when it was revealed that he had not lodged a tax return for four years.  ‘Too busy’, he said.  So he was no different from the rest of us.  We all try to minimize our tax bill, even if in some cases it is merely a euphemism for downright avoidance.  We squirm and wriggle, duck and weave, and complain like hell if we don’t get a small refund at the end of the year.  But is there any real alternative to taxes?

In a democratic society the elected government needs funds in order to manage the country effectively and provide for the future.  Without taxes there would be no law and order and no schools or hospitals, except for the very wealthy.  And even the wealthy would not be able to provide themselves with freeways and bridges, railway tracks, major sewerage and drainage systems and an electricity grid.  These things are all paid for by taxes, whether levied on the incomes of individuals and businesses or on the goods and services that they use.  Without getting into an argument about whether taxes should be used to fund welfare systems for the sick, aged, infirm or merely unemployed, it is clear that some level of tax is needed to support the kind of comfortable life for the able-bodied majority that we in the western world have come to expect.  The alternative is anarchy and a return to the Dark Ages.

Yes, back to the romantic era when knights were bold and maidens fair, and kings and emperors were just the descendants of the biggest and most evil bully in the neighbourhood, until an even meaner and bigger crook came along to topple him off his perch and take up the reins instead.   Except for a privileged few, hunger, squalor, disease and an early death were the lot of humanity.  But then, round about the 14th century, things began to change.  The learning and ideas of the ancient Greeks and Romans were rediscovered, education became more widespread (still for the chosen few) and a long period of social upheaval began.  It was called the Renaissance, the ’rebirth’.  The right of a few despots and tyrants to make life miserable for the unhappy majority was questioned and, ultimately, rejected.  However, freedom does not fill the belly or train the intellect.  So, beginning in a small way at first, the idea was born that both wealthy and less-than-wealthy citizens should be compelled to make a financial contribution to their government.

It could even be argued that taxation was the true cradle of democracy.  When autocratic kings in the late middle ages ran out of money for their costly wars and extravagant lifestyle, they demanded money from the property-owning noblemen who owed them allegiance.  In return, these noblemen demanded certain rights for themselves and constraints on the behaviour of their leader. 

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They were, in effect, calling for ‘No taxation without representation’, and what began with the Magna Carta was continued by the disgruntled citizens of Boston in 1773.  If they were going to pay a tax on their tea, they wanted to elect the people who decided how that tax was going to be spent.  The result was the United States of America.

So, do you want to pay your taxes and continue to enjoy the life to which you have become accustomed, or scrap the whole system and go back to a time when might was right, and every man had to take care of himself and protect his family from hunger, disease and lawlessness? 

Not too difficult a choice, is it?