Our nation was founded in response to the tyrannical ways that Great Britain treated Colonial Americans, including the grievance of unjust taxation without the right to representation within the government. This founding principle is ingrained as an American value—even children in schools learn that “taxation without representation” is both unjust and un-American. However, a group of millions has been left out of the conversations thus far: minors who have a job and therefore pay taxes, yet do not have the right to vote. American citizens who do not yet have the right to vote should not be taxed.
While the concept of no “taxation without representation” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, that doesn’t make it any less important to fight for. The values that a nation holds appear not just in written laws but also in the oral traditions passed on to the young people in that country. In U.S. History classes, students learn about the reasons that the Founding Fathers came together to revolt against the Crown, and one of the reasons was taxation without representation. If this value is important enough to emphasize when discussing the foundational era of American moral and ideological development, then it is certainly important enough to fight for its integrity today.
Many teenagers work in their free time, whether by choice or out of necessity, and then both the state and federal governments tax their paychecks. The state uses these tax dollars for a wide variety of things, from funding law enforcement to paying for local street repairs. In the constitution the founders explicitly ensured that all laws regarding taxation should start in the House of Representatives, because they believed that taxation should be decided by “the people’s house.” Although technically teenagers are still represented in Congress, true representation can only exist if you choose who represents you. In the case of teenagers under 18, their money is taxed and used by officials elected by others — not themselves.
The taxation of teenagers creates a new class of pseudo-citizen that are forced to monetarily support the government and are denied equal protection under the law. This is clearly a flagrant violation of long held American ideals that support equal treatment of all citizens. How can you be considered equal if you have no input into the government? This was the same argument that eighteen-year-olds made in 1971. They argued that sending young men into war that they had no way of opposing through political means was unjust. The same holds true for people under eighteen who are taxed now. They have no direct influence over their representatives, they hold no real leverage and so in effect they have no political power.
Some argue that teens benefit from the services that their tax dollars maintain, such as the roads or the public school system. But that argument fails to consider that every single person benefits from these resources, including those who do not pay taxes. Small children benefit from public parks funded by local taxes, but they did not pay any taxes towards the maintenance of that park. The government can use teens’ tax dollars to fund controversial war efforts and the seriously flawed prison system, whether or not those teens had the ability to vote for the lawmakers that make those spending choices.
Just as taxation without representation represented an affront on liberty two centuries ago, so too does it today. We cannot forget the millions of American teenagers who continue to be excluded from our democratic processes while being taxed as though they are a part of it. Teenagers without the right to shape their democracy deserve to be free from the burden of taxation.