It has been said that the power to tax is the power to destroy, which is true, but I find it more meaningful to state that the power to tax is the power to control and ultimately the power to own the labor of others. If you think about it, if your labor is taxed at 100%, you are effectively a slave to that taxing authority, so while 100% taxation is slavery, than it follows that 0% taxation is complete individual freedom without attendant social or government obligations, so somewhere in-between these two numbers should be a happy medium.
A great revolutionary war was fought in this country to protest that there shall be no taxation without representation. Yet you would find few people today that can honestly claim that their current state of taxation is represented well or even fairly. Taxation in America ranges from property taxes, to user taxes, to sales taxes, to local taxes, to State taxes, to Federal taxes, and then there are the indirect taxes which aren't even called taxes. The tax laws and the tax books in America are so long, so convoluted, with so many exceptions and exemptions, that two people can be making the exact same income and have wholly independent tax obligations depending upon their interpretation and their sophistication in regards to our tax code.
While there are many reasons why our tax code is so convoluted and so messed up, most of that blame can rest on lobbyists and legislatures that stumble through a strange symbiotic relationship. The only thing that is clear in regards to our tax codes is that those without power, without special interests or influence, will ultimately pay considerably more than those that are connected. This means that the present power to tax is in fact, the power to control and to take from the labor of unwitting others, to which the government taxing authorities specialize in wringing the bread from the laborious sweat of honest men's faces.
The fact that one's labor is taxed to begin with is the fundamental crux of the problem in the land that claims to be the land of the free. The taxing of labor or the taking of income from labor by legal taxiing authorities is a form of enslavement to the State apparatus. In point, the labor that you create, should be the labor that you keep, as the State has a multitude of ways to effect income, such as through lotteries, import duties, and excise taxes.
There is, however, one more form of taxation which is fair to the people as well as to the State, and that is the estate (death) tax. While you are alive you should definitely be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor, but upon your death, there are extremely valid arguments as to how a significant portion of those monies accumulated should be sacrificed to the State, and not to be gifted indiscriminately to your designated heirs. The man of great wealth cannot use this material wealth in the world to come and should not either be permitted to still wield earthly power through delegated agents while he resides in the undiscovered country to which such passage is free of monetary taxation.