> isnt it funny how we have invented words like "taxes", so that it can be presented as something you want to be graciously given when you want it lowered, rather than you wish to resist someone coming to enslave you, take half your working life away from you, under the threat of imprisonment and your kids being placed with a foster family.
Should we compare taxes to slavery, or to rent? If you refuse to pay your rent, you can end up homeless, and then they may indeed take your children away from you. Many places still have anti-vagrancy laws on the books–even if very inconsistently enforced–so if they really want to, they can imprison you for homelessness too.
Even if you own your own home – you bought it (or the land it is built on) from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, and so on. In settler-colonial countries such as the US, Canada or Australia, the chain of title almost always ends in a government land grant. So if the government which claims the right to tax your private property (and its inhabitants) is illegitimate, your own title to that property isn't legitimate either. That government land grant was issued subject to the condition that grantee and occupants pay taxes, and nemo dat quod non habet (the buyer can have no better title than the seller). True freehold doesn't really exist, all freehold titles are really a form of leasehold (transferrable leases), with the sovereign state as the ultimate landlord–and if you don't like it, you can always choose to rent from some other landlord instead, aka emigration.
If you are an indigenous person, you may indeed have a valid argument that your ancestors' ownership of the land long predates the existence of the current government, and hence the taxes it levies are a form of theft from you. But if you aren't indigenous, then that argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Should we compare taxes to slavery, or to rent? If you refuse to pay your rent, you can end up homeless, and then they may indeed take your children away from you. Many places still have anti-vagrancy laws on the books–even if very inconsistently enforced–so if they really want to, they can imprison you for homelessness too.
Even if you own your own home – you bought it (or the land it is built on) from somebody else, who bought it from somebody else, and so on. In settler-colonial countries such as the US, Canada or Australia, the chain of title almost always ends in a government land grant. So if the government which claims the right to tax your private property (and its inhabitants) is illegitimate, your own title to that property isn't legitimate either. That government land grant was issued subject to the condition that grantee and occupants pay taxes, and nemo dat quod non habet (the buyer can have no better title than the seller). True freehold doesn't really exist, all freehold titles are really a form of leasehold (transferrable leases), with the sovereign state as the ultimate landlord–and if you don't like it, you can always choose to rent from some other landlord instead, aka emigration.
If you are an indigenous person, you may indeed have a valid argument that your ancestors' ownership of the land long predates the existence of the current government, and hence the taxes it levies are a form of theft from you. But if you aren't indigenous, then that argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny.