in past few years there are a lot of attacks on tax evasion.
latest is the article about how eu looses more than a trillion due to tax evasion.
in simple words: governments want the cash and governments do not have much to sell.
taxes are the only way for governments to get it.
taxes on some basic theoretical level are really a great idea.
in capitalism, which is based on accumulation of wealth, there must be a way to share part of that wealth.
if there are no taxes, pure capitalism would be extremely cruel.
the problem always is not in theory, but human factor.
can we trust people who decide what happens with collected taxes?
i did not have time to search for much data, but i quickly found usa data.
usa has an annual budget just over 2 trillion usd.
in 2012 usa spent just over 700 billion usd on military.
this means that approx. 1/3 of taxes collected pay for weapons, soldiers, and wars.
serbia spends almost a billion usd and greece spends 7,5 billion usd on military.
i think it is not strange some people think twice paying taxes.
i doubt anyone would complain paying to help sick, needy, and poor.
the problem is the perception that taxes do not really do much for those in need.