Overview

• Taxation is the act of taking another’s money without their consent. Doing so clearly violates the Legal Principle.
• Whether referred to as “taxation” or not, theft is always inefficient, destructive, and immoral, even when the thief uses the proceeds for worthy purposes.
• The idea of taxation to help those in need flows from good intentions. Unfortunately, it’s clear from the $5 trillion cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone that tax revenues are often allocated destructively and wastefully. Instead of being forced to pay a cumbersome bureaucratic middleman, a more effective way of helping those in need is for us to give directly to them. Doing so also strengthens relationships and communities in the process.
• Justly transitioning to a world without taxation is an entirely different and vital discussion. We cannot abolish taxes overnight, but we should be clear that zero taxation is the goal to aim for. We must reduce taxation reasonably and responsibly to meet earned obligations, avoid unnecessary chaos in society, and ensure that essential services, such as police protection, courts, and national defense, remain robust.

Alternatives to taxation exist and can work.

• Just because governments have continuously relied on taxation does not mean they must always operate in this manner, or that alternative methods of achieving these essential goals could not exist.
  • Keep in mind that people in the United States somehow survived, and even thrived, without the federal government imposing and collecting any income tax. It wasn’t until 1913 when the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified that the federal government first possessed the Constitutional authority to levy an income tax.

Transitioning to an abolition of taxation will take time.

• The 3L Movement does not advocate for the immediate or reckless abolition of all taxation.  Instead, the 3L Movement advocates for a careful, rational, fair, and steady transition, allowing time for alternative funding mechanisms consistent with the 3L Philosophy to effectively replace taxation without compromising any necessary services or benefits to people who are justly entitled to them.
• However, the 3L Movement applauds any responsible movement toward less taxation as a worthwhile endeavor that should continue until we realize our goal of responsibly eliminating all taxation.
• We must carefully transition to voluntary funding mechanisms to pay for vital services (like courts) and to pay off the earned and contracted benefits, pensions, and other unfunded government liabilities now entirely funded by taxation.

Applying the Legal Principle

• Of course, any person, group, or corporation that earns money peacefully is the rightful owner of those funds.

Tax is theft

• No person, group, corporation, or government has a legitimate right to forcefully appropriate another’s money without their consent. Doing so initiates nonconsensual physical force against another person’s property. Civilized people agree that theft is a crime. We all learn this rule as children.
• Theft remains wrong regardless of who or what entity is acting. Most people indeed remit their taxes without any nonconsensual physical force being initiated. However, this point is irrelevant because the underlying threat of force compels them to remit payments. This situation equates to coercion. People send their money because they fear the consequences of not doing so.
• Re-labelling the involuntary appropriation of another’s property as “taxation” instead of “theft” or “robbery” does not change the nature of the act. Calling beer “milk” does not make it milk. Taxation is taking another’s money without their permission. Such theft by any other name remains theft.