The consideration war tax resisters have is that it’s bad for the government to get tax money it can spend on wars. Thus refusing to pay what one owes and not owing are equivalent in their effects.
They are equivalent in their effects on governmental tax receipts. Other effects vary significantly.
Also, it’s not clear that governmental tax receipts actually constrain government spending, at least not directly. And if you are talking about whether your specific dollar goes to some bad effect, I think the “it’s not new” flavors of MMTers* have it right—government spending creates dollars and taxation destroys dollars. So there’s no more direct connection between your personal tax dollars and any particular government spending. Government creation of dollars by spending overall can be more or less inflationary depending on how many dollars government destroys by taxing.
* MMT has often been characterized as either not new or not true, and there are different claims it makes. I would say that the alleged “not new” claims are in fact true, and make no claim regarding the agreed-new but allegedly not true claims.
The consideration war tax resisters have is that it’s bad for the government to get tax money it can spend on wars. Thus refusing to pay what one owes and not owing are equivalent in their effects.
They are equivalent in their effects on governmental tax receipts. Other effects vary significantly.
Also, it’s not clear that governmental tax receipts actually constrain government spending, at least not directly. And if you are talking about whether your specific dollar goes to some bad effect, I think the “it’s not new” flavors of MMTers* have it right—government spending creates dollars and taxation destroys dollars. So there’s no more direct connection between your personal tax dollars and any particular government spending. Government creation of dollars by spending overall can be more or less inflationary depending on how many dollars government destroys by taxing.
* MMT has often been characterized as either not new or not true, and there are different claims it makes. I would say that the alleged “not new” claims are in fact true, and make no claim regarding the agreed-new but allegedly not true claims.