What would life be like without taxes.

(Short essay I'm really stressing)

Imagine living in a world without taxes. Granted, that's a bit unlikely to happen, considering mankind's long history with taxes. It seems that taxes and government go hand-in-hand. It doesn't matter if you're talking about the old European feudal system - where Barons and Earls taxed the serfs and merchant caravans crossing their lands - or you're talking about modern socialistic and democratic governments. All governments tax. Not only does it give them a source of revenue, but it gives them a way of controlling the people.

Nevertheless, let's indulge our imaginations for a moment and think about the difference that would make to live in a tax-free society. While I don't expect ever to find such a utopia, seeing what it would be like will show us what taxes are doing to our society.

The first thing we'd all see is more money in our pockets. While the figures from various government watch agencies vary, right now, the average American family pays about 43 percent of their income out in taxes of one sort or another. That's a lot higher than we expect, mostly because our tax bill is broken into many different pieces. We see the obvious ones like income tax, property tax and sales tax, but there are many, many more.

With an average family income of about $53,657 in 2015 (according to census bureau data), that works out to the average American family paying $23,073 per year in taxes. While this number rises and falls with the political winds and the unstable economy, just knowing that some of us pay out more than $23,000 per year in taxes is shocking enough.