So much effort is put into getting people to pay tax. Why not allow people to pay what they think is fair?

see: representative democracy

see also: free-rider problem

It's one of those cases where many classical liberals and libertarians agree in principle, but far less agree in practice.

Which I suspect is in itself a verdict of how well a voluntary tax system would function.

Some might like to point to past models of taxation, which were far smaller in scope. But
a) it was more a result of lack of census, you couldn't tax like you do today.
b) Government income was often done through tariffs. The US for example relied heavily on tariffs until a federal income tax was put in place in the early 1900s.
c) Modern states are far more dependent on infrastructure. Somewhat related to that, modern economy and production make tariffs far less appealing than taxes.

Definitely, taxation should be voluntary.

If we made taxation voluntary, what could possibly go wrong?

Its already voluntary if youre rich enough

Prior to the second decade of the 20th century, the federal government was funded almost entirely by tariffs. I think that even today, that is the way to go.

I would also obtain revenue for the federal government via user fees some sort of geo-tax.

The income tax strikes me as a violation of privacy in that I don't think that it is anybody's business how much money I make.

A case could be made for a federal sales tax to replace the income tax.

That's what people who aren't rich think.

Do you know how much Bill Gates pays in taxes?

Just doing it with a sales tax would be insanely regressive.

Doing it would tariffs would screw up free trade which has made the entire world much more prosperous than it would have been otherwise.

In my opinion, "free trade" isn't free if the competition is playing by different rules. China, for example, does not honor international copyright/patent law, they employ child labor, and they have relatively few environmental regulations. I favor free trade when all parties and playing by the same rules.

I agree that a sales tax is regressive, but I would not tax food or medication, and the sales tax would be fairly low (say, 5%).

I agree with your general outlook, however.

I also favor a geo-tax, such as Alaska has on oil producers in that state. I believe every citizen in Alaska annually receives around $800 as a "Citizens Dividend" from the oil companies.

The net outcome of tariffs isn't much different from taxes, it is largely the same citizens of the same country who pay out of their pockets. US citizens pay for US tariffs. However, it is harder to organize, keep fair and block loopholes with tariffs (and doing that with taxes is no small feat to begin with).

Sure, government in the past relied on less income than today comparably, but that is mostly down to less need for supporting structures. 1800s production didn't need 2000s logistics, education and infrastructure.

Some like to paint tariffs as protecting local production, but that isn't really the case. Developed economies today rely on an intricate web of international goods and services to function, for each country to keep full production capacity for the goods modern consumers rely on seems unlikely and impossible.

This seems like a fun idea. I wonder how much I would donate.

That there are successful examples of 'pay how much you like in real life' does not mean it could work in the realm of taxation. What I sense you're aiming for is a progressive revenue, i.e. those who can afford it will pay it, and those who can't, won't, but the problem is that people who can afford it usually get that way by either or both being stingy or exploiting others, and neither of those traits lend them to paying when they don't have to. So the result would be the reduction in tax revenue to a tiny, tiny proportion of what it currently is, leading to public services being cut, which of course is a part of the conservative project, but then who builds the roads? I suppose there's a plan for that, too, the roads become privately-owned and maintained, and you can't use them unless you can afford to.

The problem is the management not the amount of taxes

Well, no, it's both. We currently have a situation akin to 'socialism for the rich', where big corporations dictate how much tax they want to pay, and then successfully lobby for policies that benefit them. So these are resdistributive, but upwards, not downwards. And on top of that, there needs to be enough money to pay for healthcare and education. None of this is black or white; everything is shades of grey, and here, more money going in is in general good for the group, less money going in is bad.

A form of this system exists through tax credits for charitable contributions (which is in effect the government partially matching private contributions). It arguably is effective for some purposes (like for example instead of the government deciding which amateur sports and cultural institutions to finance, it can match private contributions, thereby ensuring money is directed to the more popular institutions).

However it's obviously not a suitable system for financing the police, military, hospitals, public utilities, etc. What you're describing is more of an anarcho-capitalist model, where your access to police protection is dependent on paying for private security, your access to health care is dependent on buying private insurance, etc.

I understand your point, I agree that its a very complex issue, still I do think the main problem is always the management of taxes, and only after the amount of taxes, we need to be able to prioritize to solve something, corruption and incompetence will make it irrelevant if taxes are 50% or 95%. First, you get some things right like

How do you measure how much should be the taxes? The corruption level?
The competence of Politicians? Why 30% ? Why 50% ?
What are taxes used for? What objective results (i mean measurable results, not subjective) can you show?

So you think big corporations are greedy and politicians who are elected by the people are very competent and worried about the general well-being?

Have you looked carefully at most of the CVs of politicians ? I wouldn't hire most of them to manage a coffee shop
Management is a multi disciplinary area and its incredibly difficult, however, it seems people like to elect lazy corrupt demagogues

What are your benchmarks , what are the examples throughout the world you think are role models ?

Can you name one country that is your role model? I am afraid Socialism in my view (I have read Locke , Smith , K.Marx , Hayek etc) is not what you write about, just look at the social economic history of all countries and give me examples.

Socrates had a wonderful sentence that sums up all this


Democracy only works when the vote is not ignorant

because that sucks and the government would suck and people would be pissed.

The equation is very simple. Public oversight leads to less mismanagement than when you leave things in private hands.

There is no one country or period in history I look at, but in general Sweden is supposed to do a good job of enacting socialist policies while also being under the yoke of capitalism. Both the US and UK had plenty of socialist policies in place in the 50s until the 70s, co-incidentally the strongest growth from either of those two countries that there ever have been.

It seems like you have a fairly strong ideological slant against socialism so I'm afraid I'm not going to trust you to define what socialism is or isn't.

Can you show me specific data validating your statements ? Afaik , the USA/UK never had any socialist policies but i might be wrong would love to see data that proves otherwise , i am sure that we have also a very different definition of what socialism is

How do you define Socialism ?

You probably consider things like welfare state to be socialist am I right? Well, I am afraid you didn't read the liberal ideas of J.Locke, because he defended the welfare state decades (in another formula) before the first "socialist" ideas where published by K.Marx.

The welfare state starts with the first liberal ideas, not with socialism, it`s simply wrong to think that welfare or similar ideas are property of "Socialism" which is simply false.

Ok, lets simplify things . Sweden is a great example . Did you study the social-economic history of Sweden in the last 60 years? Denmark is kind of similar to Sweden...
I know you don't believe me but i hope you can believe the Danish prime minister speaking about the nordic model

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO7wgS5tdz4

Nordic countries are Liberal.

I'm not really interested in debating you. You have my permission to consider that a win if you like.

typical

you win also. hey, conservatives, look under your chairs! you get to win, so do you!