Why Do Libertarians Pay Taxes?

Libertarians pay taxes so they don’t get killed by an IRS agent for resisting arrest

It never fails. Every time I write anything about taxes I get long, rambling e-mails from tax trolls who scour the Internet looking for articles about taxes so they can contact the writers and impress them with their knowledge of the tax code.

These tax trolls usually call themselves “non-taxpayers.” They say things like: paying taxes is voluntary, the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified, most Americans aren’t required to pay income tax, many Americans have gotten refunds of all the money withheld from their paychecks, and the income tax is a classical liberal tax on federal employments, offices, and privileges. Sometimes they boast that they haven’t paid taxes for 10, 15, or 20 years and the IRS hasn’t done anything about it.

Let’s review the libertarian view of taxes.

The libertarian view of taxes is not that taxes should be fair, adequate, sufficient, constitutional, uniform, flat, simple, efficient, apportioned equally, or low.

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