The head tax at least in basic public finance courses is ideal. There’s be no way to avoid it, baring autoabortions.
Taxes are universally dissed, but they just exist because not all goods can be privately consumed (paid for and consumed by individuals who decide how much and what private goods to consume). We can’t individual decided what wars to fight, how much defense is enough, or how much privation and relief of it we want to see on the street. We collectively make these choices and nobody is happy with them. We all pay for that shared consumption through taxes. In the end it seems likely we wouldn’t like a no national defense or collective consumption world better, or at least the cost of privatizing everthing would be more than the benefits of doing so. Frank Knight said (roughly): What’s necessary is ideal.
So, taxes are a necessary part of our reality until we can make all goods privately consumable. They’re like – weather that makes us purchase heating and cooling; drugs we buy because our bodies are frail and impermanent; and scarcity itself that makes us, not Gods who decide what we want without constraints, but frail temporary being that make the best (optimal) choices within limits, including taxing ourselves.
Death and taxes are just part of the reality of our existence. It makes no sense to call them bad, or good. they just are…reality. Even if it may serve our ideolgy to feel otherwise.
Brucetheeconomist's Blog 