I refer to the report 'Taxmen go door-to-door despite uproar'. I think the controversy deserve wider and more critical discussion by Malaysian taxpayers.

In principle, and according to law, we must pay income taxes but why do so many people quietly refuse or fail to pay? The normal answer is that people are either ignorant or forgetful, or they have inexplicable income and wealth to hide. However, there is more than that.

The fundamental principle of paying income tax is for citizens to hire government leaders, public servants, armed forces and police so as to protect the common good of the nation. In this sense, taxpayers and citizens are bosses over government leaders (including Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi) and other public servants.

But, nowadays, it is the servants of the people that lord over their paymasters by using the Internal Security Act, Official Secret Act, Universities and University Colleges Act, Printing Presses and Publication Act and other anti-people laws. Why should we pay more taxes for the government to oppress us. It is illogical.

The police, for example, is not protecting the rights of the people but the security of the corrupt and anti-democratic regime. You mean, we should pay more to finance the black operations of our own oppressors?

How do government spend taxes should also be subject to popular discussions: Should we use our taxes to buy more fanciful weapons from Russia, Poland and France instead of building more libraries, schools, hospitals and computer centres for all races? Should not the government use the taxes to finance more Chinese and Tamil primary schools instead?

How does the government justify using our taxes to spend on the extensive travels of Mahathir and his cronies all over the world, without any benefits shown empirically? How to justify using taxes to save and protect crony businesses?

The BN government has become a parasitic organisation that has lost the legitimacy of collecting more people's money for unproductive consumption of a small group of elites and their sons and daughters. For these reasons, any Malaysian would have very little incentive to pay up.