Government does not hold the money, though, it redistributes it again through contracts, credits, and payments.<p>All taxes are redistributive. If they weren&#x27;t, they wouldn&#x27;t need to exist--i.e. if private income is already paying for everything the country needs, there is no need to use taxes to move it around. But of course, private income is not already paying for everything the country needs.<p>Consider a basic function of a national government: self defense. Protecting the nation benefits all citizens. But not all citizens have the same amount of wealth and income. So any taxes that pay for national defense, even if applied with one flat rate to every person, will redistribute wealth. It will confer the benefits of national defense equally on a person who paid $1 in taxes and a person who paid $1,000 in taxes. Security is a form of wealth; the $1 payer got a better deal than the $1,000 payer.<p>So, the concept that taxes are bad if they redistribute wealth is flawed, because redistribution is the entire point of taxes. Instead, to critique tax policies, we need to be specific about the taxes and payments and outcomes.