> >so, i guess i'm asking, explain why we need taxes under capitalism?
>
>
> obviously i meant: why do we need taxes at any significant rates under a
> communist system?
Marx argued that the burden of taxation falls on the capitalists and has to be paid out of surplus value. For example:
"If all taxes which bear on the working class were abolished root and branch, the necessary consequence would be the reduction of wages by the whole amount of taxes which goes into them. Either the employers' profit would rise as a direct consequence by the same quantity, or else no more than an alteration in the form of tax-collecting would have Our argument is that although some taxes are paid by the working class, the burden of taxation rests on the capitalists and has to be paid out of the profit accruing to them in the form of rent, interest and profit, the basis of which is the unpaid labour." _Criticism and Critical Morality_ (Marx and Engels _Collected Works_, Volume 6.)
Taxes only arise in a class society for the maintenance of the state and its ruling class, and so taxes do not exist in a classless society.
-- Lew