Let’s decide alone about our taxes
Taxes serve people's collective needs. People should determine those needs, but they have almost no influence over how tax policy is created. For example, workers were never asked how much they would like to pay in taxes. Worse still, they do not influence how the tax money is spent. Formally, governments and parliaments provide this spending. Yes, we choose our governments democratically by voting for their proposals in elections. But we cannot rely much on it because they rarely keep their promises. For example, I have never heard any government propose tax increases at elections; however, the practice shows that taxes grow.
Governments are supposed to use tax money to serve the people's interests, but they don’t. Control over accumulated wealth through taxes gives governments significant power, and they tend to spend the tax money as they please. However, even governments do not have complete control over this money. In the Western world, rich people have the most significant power. They have invented a highly developed mechanism that gives them control over everything, including tax revenue. The mechanism begins with friendly advice and lobbying of governments and parliament representatives, and concludes with corruption and blackmail. They are very successful, which means collective spending follows the interests of a few rather than the people. This is not fair. We all pay taxes, but only some have the power to use them. That must be changed.
In the new system I have proposed, no one will be able to take power that belongs to the people. Each person will have the right to participate directly in creating the tax policy. Each person will do this by splitting their gross income into a portion for personal spending and a portion for taxes. Workers will reduce their salaries accordingly. The sum of money intended for community taxes will make up the total tax revenue. The government will then collect this amount from workers based on their income levels. Maybe I was not clear enough: Individuals will not pay taxes in the amount they choose; they will contribute to the total tax revenue, which will then be collected from workers based on their income level.
Similarly, people can further allocate the tax money across different common expense groups. This could include health care, education, building new facilities or infrastructure, etc. Theoretically, people can further decide how to distribute funds within the groups, as long as they have an interest in it. Managers will make the final decision. They will make the best possible distribution because they will fulfill their responsibilities by receiving evaluations of their work from others.
The new tax policy will significantly contribute to society's development, regardless of what decisions people make about taxes. Through their lived experience, people will learn how much money to allocate for taxes and the best way to spend it. They will naturally allocate more money to the fields that matter most to them. In this way, public spending will most efficiently follow people's interests, and people will be most satisfied. Once people have the power to decide taxes and how the collected money is spent, nobody can take that power from them because they won't allow it.