Today is April 15. For most Americans, it’s a day of frantic paperwork, expensive accounting bills, and the inevitable “check” written to the Department of the Treasury. You’ve been told since kindergarten that this is your civic duty. You’ve been told that paying your taxes is what makes you a good citizen, a patriot.

I’m here to tell you that’s a lie.

The truth is much simpler and much more uncomfortable: Taxation is theft. It is the non-consensual seizure of property under the threat of force. You might agree to it because you don’t want to go to jail, but don’t confuse compliance with consent. And definitely don’t confuse it with morality.

The Branding of the Civil Servant

If we want to understand what’s real, we have to look at the definitions of things, not the labels the government puts on them. Imagine your neighbor, let’s call him Bob, walks up to your driveway while you’re washing your car. Bob is holding a shotgun. He tells you that the road at the end of the block has a pothole, and he’s decided it’s going to cost $5,000 to fix it. He then informs you that your “fair share” of that fix is 30% of your monthly income.

If you don’t hand over the cash, Bob says he’s going to lock you in his basement for five years.

In any other context, Bob is a criminal. He’s an extortionist. He’s a thief. You would call the police on Bob. But when the person holding the metaphorical shotgun is wearing a suit and works for an agency with three letters in its name, we change the vocabulary. We call it “public service.” We call the theft “revenue collection.” We call Bob a “civil servant.”

The act hasn’t changed. Only the branding has.

The Great Historical Flip

We live in a strange era where we celebrate the very things our ancestors fought to escape. 250 years ago, the most patriotic thing an American could do was refuse to pay the King. The American Revolution wasn’t sparked because people wanted to be “good citizens” of the British Empire, it was sparked because they realized that their labor and their property belonged to them, not to a distant monarch who claimed a “share” of their success.

Fast forward to 2026. We are taxed on what we earn. We are taxed on what we spend. We are taxed on what we own. We are even taxed on the property we “own” when we die. Somehow, over the last two and a half centuries, the definition of patriotism flipped 180 degrees. We went from “No Taxation Without Representation” to “Pay your 40% and be grateful we let you keep the rest.”

We’ve been conditioned to believe that handing over our labor to a “King” with a different title is the height of virtue. It isn’t. It’s just a habit we’ve been bullied into accepting.

The Ayn Rand Lens on Wealth

Ayn Rand had a lot to say about the morality of property, and it cuts through the noise of modern political debate. She argued that wealth is the product of an individual’s mind and effort. If you spend your life building a business, solving problems, and creating value, that value is an extension of your life. It belongs to you.

When the state steps in and says they have a “right” to a percentage of that effort, they aren’t just taking money, they are taking a piece of your life. They are claiming ownership over the hours you spent away from your family, the stress you endured to make payroll, and the intellectual energy you poured into your craft.

To forcibly redistribute that wealth isn’t “social justice.” It isn’t “fairness.” It is a moral violation. As Rand pointed out, the man who produces has a right to his product. The moment society decides it has a “claim” on the productive man’s output, it has established a system of partial slavery. You are working for a master you didn’t choose, for goals you might not support.

Why “Public Goods” are a Poor Excuse

The most common rebuttal to the truth that taxation is theft is the “roads and schools” argument. People say, “Well, how would we have bridges if we didn’t have taxes?”

This is the same logic as saying, “How would we have food if we didn’t have a government-run grocery store?” People need roads. People want schools. In a free society, the things people need and want get built because there is a demand for them.

Using the existence of a pothole to justify the moral crime of non-consensual seizure of property is a weak trade. It’s like a thief stealing your car and then leaving you a pair of bus passes on your porch, claiming he did you a favor because now you don’t have to pay for gas. You still don’t have your car. The theft is still a theft.

Awareness is the First Step to Freedom

I want to be very clear: I am not advocating for you to stop paying your taxes. Unless you have a strong desire to see the inside of a federal cell, you should probably keep filing your returns. This isn’t a call to illegal tax evasion.

This is a call to mental liberation.

I’m advocating for you to stop believing the lie that this system is “good” or “righteous.” When you stop drinking the Kool-Aid of “patriotic duty,” you start looking for ways to protect what is yours. You stop being a passive victim of the system and start becoming a student of how to exit it legally.

One of the ways I teach people to do this is through strategies like Bank on Yourself®. Most people are losing massive amounts of wealth to two things: the tax man and the banking system. Both are designed to keep you on a treadmill where you never truly own your capital.

When you understand that the system is built on a foundation of theft, you stop trusting the traditional institutions, like 401(k)s and big banks, to protect your future. They are just extensions of the same machinery.

Reclaiming the Truth

The path to true liberation starts with seeing the world as it actually is, not as the government-funded textbooks told you it was.

Taxation is the price we pay for a society that doesn’t know how to function without coercion. It is a necessary evil in our current legal reality, but it is never a moral good. This Tax Day, as you sign that check, don’t do it with a sense of pride. Do it with a sense of clarity.

You are being robbed. The fact that the robbery is legal doesn’t make it right.

Once you accept that truth, you can start building a life and a business that isn’t dependent on the crumbs the “King” allows you to keep. You can start focusing on real freedom, financial freedom, time freedom, and the freedom to keep the fruits of your labor.

If you want to learn more about how I help entrepreneurs navigate these waters and build businesses that actually serve them instead of the system, check out my book at therealjasonduncan.com/book. It’s time to stop living the lie. It’s time to start living what’s real.

The truth might make you angry, but eventually, it will make you free. Stop calling it patriotism. Call it what it is. And then, figure out how to win anyway.

– The Real Jason Duncan

Want to keep more of what you build? Jason’s #1 bestselling book Exit Without Exiting lays out the strategy for real business freedom.