Taxation. It is rare that a single word concentrates so much tension. Taxation is almost always evoked as a burden, a constraint, a levy on what each person believes they have earned by the sweat of their brow. It appears as a pure loss, seldom as an opportunity. And yet no society has ever survived without a mechanism of common contribution. It is one of the oldest and most universal foundations of collective life: to recognize that we owe something to the whole, and that the whole owes us, in return, the protection of our conditions of existence. Here lies the paradox: what should embody the most elementary bond among us has become the symbol of dispossession.
What does it reveal that today, in most countries, taxation is the only compulsory contribution of citizens? Why have we reduced participation in collective life to a mere transfer of money, as if belonging to the commons could be measured solely by what one pays into the public treasury? Behind this question lies a deeper paradox still: instead of uniting, taxation divides. Instead of symbolizing solidarity, it is experienced as an arbitrary exaction. This paradox tells something of our era: we have lost the meaning of what it is to contribute, and we have allowed the idea to take hold that paying is enough to be a citizen.
Taxation, in principle, is not merely a financial technique; it is a shared fiction. Like money, it does not rest on intrinsic value but on collective agreement: we decide together that a piece of paper or a digital transfer represents wealth, and that a portion of that wealth will be dedicated to the maintenance of the commons. Without this agreement, the bill is only cellulose, the line on a bank account only a string of numbers. What gives taxation its force is not its materiality, but the belief we share in its legitimacy.
In this, it is a pact of solidarity. It expresses the idea that we must collectively assume the cost of roads, schools, hospitals, security, justice. It enacts, imperfectly but genuinely, the principle that each contributes according to their means so that each receives according to their needs. Taxation is the quantified translation of the interdependence we cannot ignore. But this pact, which should unite, has lost its symbolic force. Instead of being felt as the tangible sign of our belonging to the commons, it is experienced as dispossession. Instead of producing trust, it generates suspicion. It has ceased to embody solidarity and become the symbol of a broken link between citizens and institutions.
Taxation, as it functions today, reveals the deep limits of our conception of citizenship. Since voting itself is not a legal obligation, we have reduced minimal participation in the commons to a monetary contribution. As though being a citizen consisted essentially in paying. As though the value of a human being in society could be measured by what they remit to the tax administration. This reduction is a systemic error. It installs confusion: the one who contributes much financially believes he has “done more than his share,” while the one who contributes little is suspected of not doing enough. Citizenship becomes an accounting equation, when it should be an existential commitment—of time, of care, of attention.
This logic has nourished a lasting malaise. It has deepened the sterile opposition between “private” and “public,” as though what belongs to the State were a burden weighing upon individuals rather than the very condition of their real freedom. It has widened the fracture between those who feel they give more than they receive and those who, often, do not receive enough. Above all, it has opened the door to glaring injustices: tax evasion depriving the commons of billions, optimization enabling the most powerful to escape what the more modest must pay without choice, opacity fueling suspicion that common funds serve private interests. In this context, taxation loses its meaning as a pact. It becomes the symbol of dispossession, a source of bitterness and sometimes resentment.
And this resentment is all the stronger because we have forgotten that there are other forms of contribution than money. We have let the idea spread that “paying suffices,” as though belonging to society could be reduced to a financial transaction. This narrowing has impoverished citizenship, turning the act of contributing into mere constraint rather than an expression of bond.
To move beyond this deadlock, we must broaden our conception of contribution. Taxation is necessary, but it cannot be the only form of participation in collective life. To reduce citizenship to a financial contribution is to forget all that each can otherwise bring to the commons: time, care, attention, transmission, daily gestures that keep society alive. Historically, other forms of contribution have existed. Medieval corvées, though often unjust, remind us that collective labor could be recognized as a debt to the community. Closer to us, civic service or compulsory national service expressed, each in their own way, the idea that citizenship implies active commitment. But these experiences were almost always thought of in terms of constraint. They failed to transform into a genuine shared culture of contribution, where each would see in giving a part of their energy to the commons not a burden but an obvious duty.
Let us imagine what a society might be where monetary taxation was accompanied by non-financial contributions, recognized and valued. Teaching voluntarily, maintaining a common space, supporting the most vulnerable, sharing know-how: so many ways of giving that cannot be measured in euros, yet infinitely enrich the collective fabric. In such a system, social recognition would not come only from wealth accumulated or taxes paid, but from service rendered to the community. Civic reputation would be built upon engagement, reliability, the constancy of gestures offered to others.
This broader culture of contribution requires that such efforts be made visible. Not by accounting for each hour as a parallel currency, but by publicly recognizing that these acts exist and that they ground the value of a citizen. By making these contributions tangible, narratable, shareable, we would give substance back to the idea of community. For what nourishes the social bond is not only what we give from our pockets, but what we give of ourselves.
If we wish to reconcile citizens with taxation, and beyond it with contribution, it is not enough to recall principles: we must invent new practices. The first is transparency. As long as each person ignores where their money goes, taxation will be felt as an arbitrary levy. We could imagine that every citizen receives each year a clear statement, detailing line by line the use of their contributions: so much for hospitals, so much for education, so much for justice, so much for ecological transition. Such readability would not solve everything, but it would strengthen trust by showing that the effort given truly sustains the commons.
The second path is direct participation. Participatory budgets, still marginal and often symbolic, could be expanded to a significant portion of tax revenues. Each could then decide, at least for a fraction, the allocation of what they contribute. A renovated school, a cycle path created, a forest protected would no longer be merely top-down projects, but collectively assumed choices. This would transform taxation from a suffered levy into a shared lever of action.
The third path is recognition of non-monetary contributions. We should make public and visible the forms of engagement that do not pass through money: volunteering, care, transmission, maintenance of the commons. Not to transform them into financial equivalents, but to grant them civic status. One could imagine a public register of contribution, where each, over a lifetime, would see consigned and recognized their share: hours given, knowledge shared, responsibilities assumed. What was hardly conceivable before the digital era becomes possible today. We can build systems at scale, across millions, enabling us to trace and valorize these non-monetary contributions. Civic reputation would thus be built upon constancy and quality of engagement, not solely upon wealth accumulated or transmitted.
These paths converge toward a single aim: to broaden the space of politics beyond money, and to remind that society holds together not only by monetary flows, but by a circulation of care, of time, of responsibility. By creating this broader culture of contribution, we may move beyond the current tension around taxation and recover its meaning: a pact, a shared responsibility, a gesture that binds us.
Taxation then regains its true meaning: not the sole criterion of citizenship, but one piece of a richer whole. A society does not hold together by money alone. It holds together by the invisible circulation of care, attentions, services rendered, knowledge transmitted, tasks accomplished without glory. It holds together because each, in their own measure, accepts to contribute to what transcends their immediate interest. To build a culture of contribution is to restore the place of all these forms of giving and engagement. It is to recognize that the one who cares for an elderly parent, who volunteers in an association, who maintains a public space, who shares knowledge, contributes as much to society as the one who pays significant taxes.
It is at this price that we may recreate trust, and move beyond the tension surrounding this word. Taxation, placed back within a culture of contribution, ceases to be a burden and becomes again a symbol: that of a freely assumed pact of solidarity, through which the living being who has become conscious of itself recalls that it does not live alone, but amid a fragile fabric that must constantly be repaired and nourished.
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