Not a Zero-Sum Game - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Any tax is a confiscation of property rights. Nonetheless,
arguably, a general nondiscriminatory tax to finance collective
affairs (for example, the police department) is generally tolerated,
along with the partial loss of one's freedom, as part of the cost of
living in society, as long as the tax is the same for everyone. How-
ever, too often people agree with their government's imposition of
discriminatory taxes to restrict the freedom of trade of third par-
ties and support such taxes not for the revenue they may generate
for the government, but rather for economic (not fiscal) and even
moral reasons. For example, governments use taxes to restrict
liquor consumption for moral reasons or to protect certain domestic
producers from foreign competitors for economic reasons, justi-
fying the violation of property rights with the incidental fact that
the persons doing the trading happen to live in different countries.
Discussions of international trade seem to forget that,
ultimately, those who engage in exchange are not nations, but
individual persons acting either directly or indirectly through
commercial agents.
For example, before the breakup of Czechoslovakia in 1993,
Vaclav, a resident of Prague, exchanged his wares with Vladimir,
who lived in Bratislava. Their government, committed to protecting
their property rights, did not interfere in their exchanges except to
guarantee their contracts, which are part of their rights. When
Czechoslovakia split in two, their exchanges became "interna-
tional commerce," subject to government regulations and duties.