Overview

• Whether referred to as “taxation” or not, theft is always inefficient, destructive, and immoral, even when the thief uses the proceeds for worthy purposes.
• 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.

Alternatives to taxation exist and can work

• Just because governments have continuously relied on taxation does not mean they must always operate that way, or alternative methods of accomplishing these essential goals could not possibly 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 immediately or recklessly abolishing 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 peacefully earning money 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 theft is a crime. We all learn this rule as children.
• Theft remains wrong regardless of who or what entity is acting. It is true that most people remit their taxes without an actual initiation of nonconsensual physical force. However, this point is irrelevant because the underlying threat of force causes them to do so. This situation equates to coercion. People send their money because they fear the consequences if they don’t.
• Re-labelling the involuntary appropriation of another’s property as “taxation” instead of “theft” or “robbery” does not change the nature of the act. Taxation is taking another’s money without their permission. Such theft by any other name remains theft.
• If you believe taxes are voluntary, you could effectively test your conclusion by refusing to pay them. We do not advise this as you would be imprisoned for tax evasion. If you run this test, you will find out the hard way there is nothing voluntary about taxation.

Taxation and democracy