Legalized Robbery
A common libertarian war cry is that taxation is theft. It is a simple aphorism that elicits strong responses from most who hear it. Those responses usually tell you a fair bit about the responders. If they full-throatedly agree, they proudly wear the porcupine.
If they mock, and cough up "taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society," they are statists who at their core do not believe in property rights. Certainly they will protest that description, but I've often asked "how much of the fruit of my labor can the state take before I become a slave?" and never gotten anything more than "however much the voters decide."
If they wince a bit and start to discuss, they likely fall on the pro-rights side with a dose of realism.
That's where I trot out my "two types of taxes" argument. If you don't want to click through, that argument is that fee-for-service taxation carries some legitimacy, but that "take from Peter to give to Paul" taxation is immoral and fundamentally conflicts with any system that respects property rights.
Unfortunately, the latter form of taxation is today rampant in America, no matter the principles of liberty that the country was founded on, and no matter the principle "Not Yours To Give" that Davy Crockett, as a Congressman, set forth in his speech opposing a bill that would give some taxpayers’ money to a widow of a naval officer.
So, if you quote "Taxation is Theft" at me, I will reply "Some Taxation Is Theft*."
Again unfortunately, that's not the only way government steals from us. Two especially egregious forms are on the docket (one literally) today.
The first: civil asset forfeiture. Slowly being limited or banned at the state level, civil asset forfeiture entails an agent of the government, oftentimes a police officer, simply confiscating cash or goods on the pretext that they were ill-gotten, and dropping the burden of proof on the owner if he wants to protest. No criminal conviction is required, and if you read the legal documents used in such actions, they often charge the money or asset itself rather than the owner. Here are seven "horror stories," and here is the Institute for Justice's (IJ) page on the matter. Civil asset forfeiture is an absolutely egregious abuse of power, and it's a classic example of how just about everything improper about government boils down to Other People's Money.
The second: eminent domain abuse. The Constitution gave the government the right to take private property for public use, with proper compensation, so that one person cannot prevent a road from being built where the voters want it built. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment reads:
"[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
Unfortunately, "public use" has been expanded to mean "anything that the government can claim will benefit the public," including increased tax revenues. This was the heart of the government's argument in the notorious Kelo v City of New London case, where a bunch of homes were taken and razed by the government so that the land could be given to Pfizer for a new facility.
Just as with taxation, there is eminent domain “taking” for public purposes, and there is “taking from Peter to give to Paul.”
In what I would argue is one of the worst decisions in its history, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision along ideological lines (with Anthony Kennedy, as he did so often, tipping the scale), ruled that this "greater tax revenue" argument was a legitimate "public purpose" (a standard that had replaced public use via prior rulings). The ruling was so egregious that all but a handful of states have since passed laws limiting eminent domain takings of this nature.
The Court now has an opportunity to undo, in part or in whole, this atrocity. It is hearing, today, oral arguments in Bowers v Oneida County Industrial Development Agency. Bowers is another instance of government taking land so that it can give or sell it to another private citizen or entity. In this case, a parcel of land owned by a plumbing company and in contract to sell to a developer was taken so that a developer building a medical office building on an adjacent lot could use it for a parking lot.
It's bad enough when the government taxes us just so it can hand money out to favored constituencies. It's even worse when a cop who finds you carrying a large sum of cash can say "you must be a drug dealer" and, without proof, just take it. It's venturing into banana republic territory when property you own can be taken from you so that some other private person can have it.
One favorable and lasting consequence of Trump's first victory is the ideological tipping of the court in a more conservative direction. While libertarians and conservatives have many differences, there is much common cause at the Supreme Court, and I have high hopes that this Court will throw Kelo out the window and set a far more limited and proper meaning of "public use."
Until then, such legalized theft* will unfortunately continue.
* I often replace "theft" with "armed robbery," because guys with guns will show up at your door if you refuse to willingly fork over whatever the government demands.
It is unfortunate that almost anything constitutional has change in interpretation since the "progressive" era. It is the case with the "general welfare" clause, which has led to the burgeoning bureaucracy we know today (in addition to the multitude of federal laws, rules, and regulations), and it has torn at the very fabric of our country. The founders explicitly stated that they authored the Constitution to improve the Union created under the Articles of Confederation, and that the purpose was to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." That liberty-mindedness has long since given way to a more totalitarian perspective on government. Whether it has been a failure of education from as early as the early-to-mid 1800s, a failure of men to be angels (as The Federalist Number 51 informs us), Marxist indoctrination, or some combination of all of these or other factors, Americans no longer recognize the original intent of "limited government" with powers that are "few and defined." The problem does not just exist at the federal level either, though many states, as you note, are making at least small moves in the right direction.
"how much of the fruit of my labor can the state take before I become a slave?"
I have said elsewhere that, "property tax makes people renters of the state; income tax makes people slaves of the state." The only tax on the people, IMO, that is not abusive to these ends, is a consumption (excise) tax. Some argue that SCOTUS upheld the income tax as constitutional on the basis of it being an excise, but this is not how the founders would have understood the term "excise." Going to Webster's 1828 Dictionary is helpful in this regard: "EXCI'SE, noun s as z. [Latin excisum, cut off, from excido.]
An inland duty or impost, laid on commodities consumed, or on the retail, which is the last state before consumption; as an excise on coffee, soap, candles, which a person consumes in his family. But many articles are excised at the manufactories, as spirit at the distillery, printed silks and linens at the printer's, etc." - https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/excise
This is how the founders would have viewed an excise. So, whether the government lays an excise, or even a capitation (poll tax), these would be, under our Constitution, lawful, and perhaps moral. But property tax and income tax are not. They are, as you posit, armed robbery.