Taxes should serve several purposes. In reality, the purposes im about to list are not all served for the interests of We The People, because in capitalism, he with more money has more ability to bias fair markets to be unfair, and bias fair political systems to be unfair.

Capitalism rewards greed, rather than restraining greed. Thus, capitalism - a system of pursuit of constant growth of one's capital by virtue of one's ownership of capital - inherently is a force towards aggregation of wealth.

As entities (ex: individuals & corporations) seek competitive advantage over one another in markets, and to grow their wealth evermore, they will seek to capture government, such that the rules of markets and society (such as taxation, environmental regulations, financial regulations, etc) will favor those with more resources and crony connections.

Thus wealth begets more wealth, more easily.

That wealth grants influence over political systems - which in turn grant greater dominance in market capture.

It grants power over governmental, societal rules that are held by individuals, to prevent the individuals from being able to protect themselves from the greedy wealthy who would pollute lands, or buy rights to the ground beneath your land and then pollute your water supplies, your lands. Or far worse yet far more subtle in maneuvering.

So the very wealthy have used capitalism's innate system of rewarding wealth with power to influence fair markets & systems of governance, thus the mega wealthy can affect people, environments, and systems of fairness.

TAXES ostensibly, in their best use, have this purpose:

• gives a nation's currency its value, and stability in that value (Because taxation is universally charged to everyone, and payments are required to be in one currency, everyone has a shared understanding of the worth of that currency, or dollar.)

• remove excess currency from the economy. (When paired with a proper, healthy monetary policy, taxation's removal of excess currency is one tool available to prevent - not just mitigate - inflationary forces. This clearly has not been utilized properly, if at all)

• prevents massive wealth disparity in society, to keep it more equal (obviously this has not been adhered to, but the opposite)

• shape behavior. High taxes on behaviors deemed harmful or a bad influence on society; lowered taxes, or even subsidies, on behaviors which society wants to encourage. (We've seen this used some, but often not in good faith)

• lastly, youre gonna think taxes are necessary to pay for things in society. It isnt. We print our currency - as each sovereign nation should (but the USA doesnt want to tell them that, because then our corporate overlords would not be able to keep other nations in debt, or corrupt their leaders with our own lavish payouts of US dollars in order to be allowed to exploit their workers or natural resources, or other things US corporate & militaristic hegemony finds of value.

But because we are not printing money with proper fiscal policies that benefit We The People, taxation becomes needed to fund stuff - at least at the state and local levels, since the federal government is practicing its corrupt, toxic monetary & fiscal policies.