In the modern world, you must pay taxes or you go to prison.
If tax is not theft, then the government owns a percentage of the results/rewards/consequences of your labour/time.
In other words, you are not solely responsible for the consequences of your actions. The government assumes a percentage of the rewards/consequences of your actions through tax. (If they could take your smiles and laughs, I’m sure they would.)
However, different people pay different rates of tax, depending on how much they earn.
For example, someone making a little may pay 25% of the fruits of their labour to the government as tax, whereas someone who earns much more may pay 75% of what they earn to the government.
In both cases the government steps in to assume ownership or responsibility for a percentage.
Now, if two people in different tax brackets commit the same crime, would it not make sense for the government to be consistent in its role of assuming the consequences of people’s actions, e.g. the rewards of the fruits of people’s labours (consequences of their actions), should they not equally assume that same responsibility for negative consequences?
On a 10 year prison sentence, it would then be just for the poor person in the 25% tax bracket to only do 7.5 years in prison (25% belongs to the state), whereas it would be most just for the wealthy person in the 75% tax bracket to do a maximum of 2.5 years in prison (75% belongs to the state).
Rich people should be less accountable than poor people under the law because the law works by percentages, and everyone must be treated equally under the law according to the rule of law. Of percentages. Because logic. Errr… science… err…
Ahem…
Or maybe tax is just slavery by a percentage, and that’s the problem that should be dealt with, and the only way for the rule of law to be upheld is for NOBODY to take what doesn’t belong to them whether it be a percentage or an entirety.