No one whole-heartedly loves tax, except those who collects them of course. Taxation is necessary to keep a government functional and that's fair enough. What is not fair is that we do not have enough control over the government's spendings. We paid our tax to the government according to our income, end of story. How that money was spent was never revealed (you wouldn't know whose money exactly these were, but the cases that did reveal spending of taxation money were scary, Craig Thomson uses it for his prostitutes, $16m stolen by a Queensland Health officer, millions spent on Labor's home insulation program which electrocuted a few workers and eventually more was spent to pull them all out, the list goes on). This tax system is corrupt and we need to demolish it and build it from the ground up again. This is where voluntary taxation should come in.
Of course a voluntary system would sound like no tax for you on first impression, but there are driving forces that would motivate people enough to pay (very realistic projects such as fixing the flood damaged road that you drive on every single day, installing seatbelts on your kid's school bus or funding research on breast cancer which just took the life of your aunt etc). The benefit is very obvious: you are only paying for what you would like to contribute to (often what's genuinely and promptly benefiting yourself) instead of what the government forces upon you, and the amount is completely up to you. Of course the more funds a project gets the quicker it would proceed, that, on itself, prioritizes what people wants the most to be accomplished sooner.
Think any aspect of a government function (diplomacy, defence, health, welfare, education, research, infrastructure or even the green movement), there should be people passionate enough to contribute their tax money for it. If no one's contributing to it, no one needs it. It's that simple.
People vote by their money, not a ballot. There is no need for empty election promises, because under the current system the elected candidate get control of your tax money and does whatever he/she wants with it, not under a voluntary system though. The account of any project should be available to be reviewed by everyone, or detailed to the ones who contributed and briefed to the ones who didn't.
Getting a project going is easy. When interest is expressed on a certain project, an empty account can be created by the government. People will contribute to this account until it gets enough money to kick-start, then it is the government's sole responsibility to get it done in a timely manner. There should be a time limit for raising funds though, preferably set case-by-case. If not enough fund was raised during that period (people are not interested enough to get it done at this stage) the money should be returned (without interest). Of course this failed project could be started again at a better timing.
As taxation is no longer enforced, the government body of enforcement of taxation (ATO in Australia) might even become redundant. The statistic work can be taken over by ABS.
Yes we might still be better off with a government to manage all those projects, a very restrictive one though. How do you restrict a government? Cut on the money given to it and refuse it to run into deficit. In a totally voluntary system, the surplus of any project can go to the everyday operation of a government, and that's it. If they do want some sense of security then a say 1% flat rate income tax/profit tax can be applied for individuals/companies. No people with higher incomes does not deserve to pay tax at a higher rate, they are paying a larger absolute amount already, and people with lower income do need to have a sense of responsibility to contribute to the society instead of winging and hating on the better-offs.
I think I ran into a bit too much detail on some of my points and not enough for some others, but this ideology has only recently hit me and I will need a bit more time to think about it more thoroughly. Hopefully I'd come back to this topic at some point with better sorted opinions.
