Like most good Americans, I like my tea best when it is floating in the harbor. Any kind of taxation has always had some degree of negative connotation with American culture, and rightfully so. Arguably the most popular phrase most often related with the Libertarian party, "taxation is theft," evokes sensations of both patriotism and skepticism. I am going to do my best to explain the logic behind this thinking in layman's terms.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines theft as "the action or crime of stealing," and defines stealing as "tak[ing] (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it." At its raw core (with complete disregard for any bipartisan meddling) it is not hard to equate taxation to theft. The best example of this is the obvious income tax, which is best described through the phrase "how much of each dollar that I earn do I owe you?" Effectively, any tax that directly relates to one's life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in theory, can and should be considered theft, simply because that's what it is—theft. But we as a populace at the least adhere to the taxes placed before us due to their result—safety, infrastructure, and education. But this is where the next part of the argument takes hold.

Libertarians hate roads. They also hate the war on drugs. Libertarians hate anything that is wastefully using our tax dollars to do what a free market could achieve in theory. What it boils down to is the notion that the only thing Libertarians want to be funded are the military and absolutely essential programs, greatly decreasing the deficit and the current account imbalance (which sounds nice in theory but realistically is not going to happen).

Time for a very brief lesson in economics: Libertarians generally tend towards a more Classical approach rather than a Keynesian one, which simply means that they trust that little to no government intervention is needed to fix any kind of market due to an almost automatic change in prices. The reason this is important is because, in order for (almost) all taxation to be theft, there has to be a lack of government programs which are funded by the aforementioned taxes. In a perfectly free economy, simple supply and demand would dictate the price for everything from education to healthcare and balance out with what the consumers, us, would pay for. But corporations (and subsequently people) are greedy, and the gradual introduction of cheap foreign labor greatly complicates this in practice.

Obviously, there is a lot to discuss with the cause and effect of government intervention in a free market, but the important takeaway is that in order for all taxes to be considered theft, they would have to be funding something non-essential to meet a standard of living. It is this line of logic that is the result of the Libertarian view of greatly reducing government intervention, thus causing most taxes to be theft.

Considering this, the only tax in this school of thought that would not be considered theft is a tax on non-essential items. But, due to the current system and values in modern American society, there must exist a number of taxes which allow funding for programs, which in reality, can be easily corrupted by pure market intervention. Do not misinterpret this as an evil of capitalism, that is simply a consequence of the greed of men. Some might say socialism is the answer to this, but all that economic system does is serve the 1% (those who run the show) and equally screw everyone else over, but I digress.

Regardless of the purpose, most taxes are in fact theft, but a theft which we all (should) mutually benefit from in the end.