Taxation is Theft

I guess this is a pretty key part to serious libertarian thinking. Anyway:

1. Theft is the taking of someone's property against their will.

2. Taxation is the taking of someone's property against their will by the state.

3. Taxation is theft. (1, 2)

I think that 1 is a perfectly acceptable definition of theft. Clearly 3 is the logical conclusion of 1 and 2. The only contentious premise is 2.
There are several possible responses which claim that 2 is incorrect. I will attempt to debunk them in turn.

The democratic argument
This argument suggests that 2 is false because if democratic means are used to pass legislation which involves taxation, then the property taken is legitimately the property of the state/public, and not the property of the individual concerned. However, here we must ask: why? Assuming no laws were broken in the process of the individual acquiring his property, what did the rest of the voting public do to earn ownership rights? We can also further critique this argument by asking: which democracy? The voting public of my road might decide to take my property; but of my town might not; the public of my country might vote to steal; but the world not.
Furthermore, we might ask that if this rule applies to property, why not more? If the majority vote to kill an individual, does the individual have his right to life superseded by the majoritarian decision? Clearly not; and yet we must ask the proponents of this view why they attribute the majority the right of ownership of property (which was, until the majority decision, clearly owned by the individual), but not the right of ownership of life (which was, until the majority decision, clearly owned by the individual).
The problem with the claim that plain democracy ensures a transfer of property rights can be seen in a micro-example of what actually goes on. There are ten people in a room. One of them proposes that him and eight of the others should take some of the tenth's money. They vote on it; and the vote comes down 9-1. They take the tenth's money against his will. Here, all ten people (including the victim of the 'law') were included in the democratic process; and yet we would all agree that that was theft. However, there is no inherent difference between that situation and what actually goes on in the society the proponents of the democratic argument propose.
Plain democracy clearly does not ensure a legitimate change of property rights; it needs to be buttressed by a belief in society's general right to (at least some of) the property of all - and this is the social contract argument.

The Social Contract
This view says that by the very virtue of being part of a 'society' (that is, a group of people), that group of people, the society has some level of ownership over a member's property, and thus 2 is false because taxation is not the taking of somebody's property at all (it is society's property). In order to not fall to the same problems as the democratic argument, the social contract argument suggests that we, in some capacity, 'sign up' to a social contract, where we agree to follow what the rulers of the society (most commonly the majority), say. It is in this way that the society has some sort of right of ownership over an individual's property.
I have never signed a social contract; in fact, I'm not sure that anyone ever has. And yet - we're all taxed. What social contract theorists propose is that by the virtue of an individual living in the geographical region which the social contract is supposed to reign over, I have (by implication), signed up to the social contract and thus the decrees of the society*. Usually social contract theorists will not say that an individual must abide by every imaginable law the society's rulers come up with (a law to kill the individual, for example, would not need to be abided by), but that generally speaking some sort of level of ownership over each individual's property (and usually liberty) is gained by the state by the implication of the signing of the contract.
What I argue here is that an individual merely living in the geographical region which the state has claimed jurisdiction of is not enough to imply that the individual has signed a social contract which gives away some property rights to the state. For a start, why the state which currently exists? If I was to tell everyone on my street that I have set up a society here, and that by implication of them living in the street they have signed my social contract, and thus I will be taking 10% of their annual income, they would not be best pleased (even if I promised to spend the money on them!). Even if I had a majority of the street behind me, asking the minority for 10% of their income would still be unfair. Them merely living in my street does not give me any ownership of their property - why? - because they never agreed that that would be the case.
The same applies with the state at large. A group of people setting up and telling individuals that they are within the remit of their 'society' does not mean that any of the property rights of those individuals has suddenly been transferred to the state.
Furthermore, it is not as if individuals have been given the option to live in the geographical location which the state has claimed ownership of. If the state tells people that they can leave if they wish to escape the state's remit of property ownership, then people are being unjustly told to move, or be stolen from. This view therefore also does not legitimise the state's claim to some of the property of individuals.
Thus, the argument that society has a right to some ownership of individuals' property merely by the signing of a contract is insufficient. No such contract has been signed, and no implication of a signing can be drawn simply by the living in the area the state has laid claim to.

"It's spent on you"
This argument suggests that 2 is false because the fact that tax is spent on the populous and that thus the average loss of property in taxes is equally made up by public spending on the populous means that there is no theft at all; what you lose, you gain. Clearly we do not hold this principle elsewhere when thinking about theft. If I steal £1,000 from my next door neighbour but place a £1,000 vase in his living room, I have still stolen from him. Furthermore, for many people what they get back in public spending they value at much less than what they lose in taxes. The only way this argument could sort of be made legitimate would be if the way the state spends my money exactly mirrors how I would have spent the money had I not been taxed; in a sense, this would not be stealing; but even if that did occur, the whole process was useless anyway.

"I don't mind paying it"
This argument suggests that 2 is false because the individual proposing it does actually not mind being taxed since he knows his money is going to a good cause - so taxation is not "against the individual's will". In which case, the use of the state was unnecessary - apparently the individual would have spent their money as the state did anyway. At the most, the state simply transferred the money to the right place more efficiently than had a private individual done it ("The state knows how my money is best spent on others"). However, this is not what taxation is for most, (or, at least some) people. Taxation is the forceful taking of their money against their will. There is always an implicit threat of force in taxation; had the individual not minded paying tax, then there was no force needed, and such a process (of an organisation directing one's charitable givings 'most efficiently'), could be done outside the state and without force. If everybody was perfectly fine with being taxed and the state deciding how to spend the money, then there would be no more need for the state to threaten force on those who do not pay their taxes, and it would cease to be stealing. This does not happen, because some people (more or less all, in fact) are not entirely happy to pay taxes, and thus taxation is against their will - so 2 remains true.

The "good ends" argument
This argument suggests that the good results from taxation mean that it is not theft. But, this argument does not actually address either of the premises. That tax and spend might produce good results does not render 1 false (because stealing is stealing regardless of how the money is spent), or 2 (because taxation remains the taking of property against the will of the owner, regardless of the good which comes of it).
However, those who bring up this argument are actually not suggesting that taxation is not theft, at least, not under the current definition (1). They are suggesting that theft for some purposes is morally acceptable. Indeed, it is clear how we could move the current argument to a moral one:

4. Theft is wrong

5. Taxation is wrong (3, 4)

Those who suggest that the good results of tax and spend legitimise it are not (logically) denying that taxation is theft; they are merely denying that 4 is absolutely true, and thus claiming that 5 is not absolutely true. Indeed, many people would argue that a man who steals bread to keep his starving family alive is not doing anything immoral - but his theft remains theft regardless. Thus, people of any political or ethical persuasion can agree with my argument 1-3, that taxation is theft, but still deny 5 because they deny 4. In order to determine that 4 holds and thus that taxation is wrong requires consideration of an ethical code. I reflected on this very briefly and broadly some time ago here, but really a full moral system is needed to determine when theft is and is not wrong; and whatever the answer, the morality of taxation will follow that.

Thus, I conclude that taxation is theft, but not yet that taxation is wrong - that will require considerably more thinking. I also have not considered the argument that no individual has a right to property (see: All property is theft), because it is outside the scope of this essay. If we have property rights, which I think we do, then taxation is theft.

*Here by 'social contract theorist', I mean people who presume that society has some right over an individual's property purely by him living in the geographical area; the actual philosophical theorists like Rousseau and Hobbes did want a more formal contract.