One editorial I recently read in the Wall Street Journal was written by a businessman acting as a consultant in Korea. I believe that taxes are purely evil, totally destructive, and entirely unnecessary, to boot. Taxes are evil for exactly the same reason it's evil for a mugger to take your wallet on the street. Taxes are destructive because the money taken from you would otherwise raise your standard of living - and that of your associates and society at large when you either spent or invest it. Paying taxes isn't your patriotic duty.
Taxes maintain the government, which is a totally different thing from the country.
Government has a life of its own, like General Motors or IBM, with its own interests. But corporations stay in business only by providing goods and services people are willing to pay for voluntarily. The government's interests not only aren't the same as those of society - they are, perversely, most often antithetical to those of society. The government is a living being, and like any being or organization, its first mandate is to survive and grow. Then you pay sales, real estate, excise, luxury, and a thousand other taxes with the remainder.