I was interested to see some on here asking "why should a rich person pay more for the same services than a poorer person?" on the back of council tax/poll tax discussions. Now of course no one likes tax, but we need to understand it, so I wanted to bash out my quick, unpolished thoughts on tax in general. Of course tax should be minimised, spent wisely, efficiently and productively. I'm opposed to punitive taxation ie just for the sake of punishing those with more - even though it doesn't help or raise more revenue. Yet for me, tax is the cost of living in a legitimate civil society. It should pay for society's law and order, defence, hospitals, education, rubbish collection, legal aid, social care for our elderly, state pensions, special ed needs, disability protection, medical care and help for those who can't help themselves and more. So it's the cost of being part of both broad national and narrow local communities - hopefully for the collective betterment of all. If you were simply to say "you only pay for what you use" that isn't tax, that's service provision. Never mind the tricky questions of how you assign the cost of things like defence or policing (some may say that view'd mean if your house burnt down the fire brigade should bill you after). As for why a rich person pays a more. Well because if you take £500/mth poll tax off someone who earns £1,000/mth it's crippling, off someone who earns £100,000/mth it's hardly noticed, and they still have far more disposable income. And so if you tax everyone an equal amount, when it has a disproportionate and more damaging effect on those with less, then you start to move people into desperate situations, which risks higher crime, less safe streets, social unrest and eventually societal breakdown. So I am generally in favour of progressive taxation, which means those say with more income , pay a reasonable higher proportion of tax, because they can afford to. After all those who are more affluent, have broader shoulders, and have likely made money from society as a whole - and a well functioning society is needed for wealth creation. PS I've been deliberately unspecific here, this isn't about supporting one structure of tax, just being about tax as a concept. And equally I think tax planning is fine (ie working within the rules to minimise tax - often because you're doing something the state is trying to encourage you to do - like save in an ISA or invest or put money aside for your future)