Taxes determine incomes, not make up a part of them

For the proponents of the argument that taxation is a theft in that it siphons away money that doesn’t sufficiently reap the rewards for such payments, Matt Bruenig argues that our understanding of taxes as a fraction of a differentiating level of incomes is fundamentally skewed. Bruenig argues that the gross tax income is the amount of money paid out to capital and labor without the subtraction of taxes. Bruenig argues that the government does not step in and tax a specific class of individuals. Instead, the government sets up institutions which direct factor income towards these classes of individuals. Through this logic, taxes in fact do not take away from a person’s income at all, and therefore cannot be construed as a theft; taxes are instead the factors that DETERMINE each person’s income.