Aumento de Impostos?

Taxation Is Robbery, by Frank Chodorov
[From Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist, by Frank Chodorov; The Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1962, pp. 216–239.]

THE Encyclopaedia Britannica defines taxation as "that part of the revenues of a state which is obtained by the compulsory dues and charges upon its subjects." That is about as concise and accurate as a definition can be; it leaves no room for argument as to what taxation is. (...)What sanc­tion, in morals, does the State adduce for the taking of property? Is its exercise of sovereignty sufficient unto itself?

On this question of morality there are two positions, and never the twain will meet. Those who hold that political institutions stem from "the nature of man," thus enjoying vicarious divinity, or those who pronounce the State the key­stone of social integrations, can find no quarrel with taxa­tion per se; the State's taking of property is justified by its being or its beneficial office.

On the other hand, those who hold to the primacy of the individual, whose very existence is his claim to inalienable rights, lean to the position that in the compulsory collection of dues and charges the State is merely exercising power, without regard to morals.(...)

If the State has a prior right to the products of one's labor, his right to existence is qualified. Aside from the fact that no such prior right can be established, except by declaring the State the author of all rights, our inclination (as shown in the effort to avoid paying taxes) is to reject this concept of priority. (...)

In principle, as the framers of the Constitution realized, the direct tax is most vicious, for it directly denies the sanc­tity of private property. By its very surreptition the indirect tax is a back-handed recognition of the right of the indi­vidual to his earnings; the State sneaks up on the owner, so to speak, and takes what it needs on the grounds of neces­sity, but it does not have the temerity to question the right of the owner to his goods. The direct tax, however, boldly and unashamedly proclaims the prior right of the State to all property. Private ownership becomes a temporary and revocable stewardship. The Jeffersonian ideal of inalienable rights is thus liquidated, and substituted for it is the Marx­ist concept of state supremacy.(...)

Taxes cannot be compared to dues paid to a voluntary organization for such services as one expects from membership, because the choice of withdrawal does not exist.(...)

If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash invest­ment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation.(...)

(...) They insist that the State is a contributing factor in production, and that its services ought properly to be paid for; the measure of the value of these services is the income of its citizens, and a graduated tax on these incomes is only due compensation. If earnings reflect the services of the State, it follows that larger earnings result from more services, and the logical conclusion is that the State is a better servant of the rich than of the poor.(...)

The State does not give; it merely takes. All this argument, however, is a concession to the obfus­cation with which custom, law and sophistry have covered up the true character of taxation. There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion."