I read a news item today about a certain Kiev resident who sold real estate for $8.15 million. The tax authorities found him and forced him to pay 3.3 million hryvnias.
It is clear that the state presents this as a victory for law and order, but that is not what I am talking about now. When you talk to our people about taxes, the most popular theory of the origin of taxation goes like this. According to this theory, people are lazy and shortsighted. They voluntarily agreed that some small part of their income would be taken by force for common needs. After all, dealing with these needs is such a hassle—you have to monitor them, attend all sorts of community meetings and so on. Besides, you would not pay for each individual public benefit, since the benefit is public, and you yourself may not receive anything from it. But this way—they take a little from you, but the common good will be ensured and looked after, and your conscience will be clean.
These people are especially insistent that such a system arose naturally—that is, voluntarily—through evolution. And indeed, our reality seems not to refute this theory. We seem to pay few taxes. Moreover, we do not feel them, since VAT is usually already included in the price, and other taxes are paid on our behalf by enterprises. It seems as if things are arranged for our own benefit and completely imperceptibly to us, the state quietly cares for the common good.
Stories similar to what happened to the unfortunate Kiev resident show the futility of this theory. The thing is, here we are dealing with a private individual, not an enterprise, and with a sum quite tangible for a private individual that was taken by the state. That is, the idyll of peaceful and practically painless state vampirism that the theory of “voluntary evolutionary choice of taxes” instills in us falls apart by itself, since the first thought that ignites in the brain in huge letters is—FOR WHAT. For what did a specific person pay an enormous sum for an ordinary Ukrainian? The haze of “evenness” and “imperceptibility” disappears and questions arise.
If you think further, it is not difficult to discover that corporate taxes, in the end, we also pay. In physical reality, there are no “legal entities.” In physical reality, only natural persons exist. And it is they who, in the end, pay (or receive less income), what is considered corporate taxes.
And if you think even further, a truly terrifying picture opens up. See for yourself. The “evolutionary choice of taxes,” however evolutionary it may be, must still consist of quite specific and tangible acts of voluntary transfer of power over oneself to third parties in certain situations. For example, if I have a problem with alcohol, I can ask my friend, with whom I am going to a party, to watch over me and apply force if something happens. But with taxes, something does not add up. After all, everyone pays taxes. You only need to be born and you are already a taxpayer. No, I can quite well imagine a request to the state from a certain person to skin him alive, since he himself cannot be bothered to pay for certain services. I can imagine such a request from a group of persons. But from the entire population of a certain territory controlled by a certain state—no, I cannot. I cannot imagine people in their right minds and sound memory asking rulers to skin not only them, but generally everyone who lives here and is just passing through. I cannot imagine a request to collect taxes not only from them, but from their descendants, not to the seventh or even to the twelfth generation, but for ages! Do you imagine these people? Because given the ubiquity of taxation, it should not be just an isolated case, it should be an entire centuries-long movement on a global scale! And yet, history for some reason is silent about it! There is nothing about such a phenomenon in it. There is about Prince Igor and the Derevlianians, but about this—there is nothing.
Apparently, this is not by chance. Much closer to the truth is the situation when a certain Prince Igor declares a certain territory, which he can hold by force, his state, and skins the tribute from the people found there. And then it is clear why everyone pays, and why this matter is tied to territory rather than a contract, and why all residents and their descendants pay for ages, and why the nobility that works for Prince Igor pays nothing. And in history you will find many such examples. In fact, it entirely consists of them. Therefore, what we have now is simply a continuation of this good old practice. And the “evolutionary theory of the origin of taxes” is simply such a faith. For self-comfort.