I found a few texts on this site about taxation, but was looking for some more suggestions on things to read. One from Rothbard is http://mises.org/rothbard/myth.pdf but the whole book it is contained in seems to not be online.
I only had time to skim this one so far but he concludes that, “neutral taxation is an oxymoron; that the free market and taxation are inherently incompatible; and therefore either the goal of neutrality must be forsaken, or else we must abandon the institution of taxation itself.”
I know that Ron Paul and many other libertarians seem to advocate (albeit only temporarily maybe) a flat tax, but I don’t understand on what basis they do so. Where are some places I might find this answer?
Read Rothbard’s Power and Market, the addendum to Man, Economy & State. I think there’s some good stuff in there about taxes.
There’s an essay of Rothbard’s against the Consumption tax (generally conceived as a national, flat sales tax) which would also be worth reading. It’s available here.
Ron Paul was for the abolishment of the income tax. In any case, all taxes take money out of productive sectors of the economy and put them into nonproductive sectors, though some taxes are more harmful than others. For example, capital gains and corporate taxes take money out of investments, thereby significantly slowing economic growth.
In terms of literature and articles, here’s what I found:
Thanks guys. Several of these were enlightening, but I haven’t had time to look through much of Power and Market yet. I don’t expect Rothbard to really advocate any form of taxation at all but I was looking for some form of argument for one being preferable in a situation where significant reform was possible. I didn’t know much of the details about the flat tax before and it does seem troubling giving government new avenues to get at people’s money, since these policies are usually hard to get rid of later.