There are four purposes to taxation. 1: Destroy money. The government doesn’t need to tax to spend money. It just has to write the check. However, money it spends adds to the money supply, and this would cause inflation if an equal amount of money wasn’t taken out of circulation or destroyed. If money is taken out of circulation but not destroyed, as when the government borrows to spend, (which it rarely has any need to,) and this money is accumulated by the financial sector, the potential for inflation remains, and increases as the amount of money in the financial sector increases. 2: Discourage certain behaviors, or, through negative taxes , ie subsidy, (a word for particular forms of spending,) encourage certain (other) behaviors. All spending, of course, encourages the production of what it is being spent on. (Allowing for profits, of course.) 3: Redistribute demand, and therefore wealth. More or less egalitarian societies, such as democracies, cannot survive an excess of economic