Taxes create powerful symbols of commitment.
Yonah ’6 [Reuven Avi; Fall 2006; Irwin I. Cohn Professor of Law and Director of the International Tax LLM Program at the University of Michigan Law School, PhD in History from Harvard University, AM in History from Harvard University, JD from Harvard Law School; Tax Law Review, “The Three Goals of Taxation,” vol. 60]
Finally, income taxation has an important symbolic value. To a large extent, current U.S. dissatisfaction with the income tax stems from the perception that it is not progressive enough - that is, that the rich can avoid paying their "fair share." 114 The result of this dissatisfaction has been attempts to ensure that the rich pay their "fair share" (like the AMT), and attempts to reduce opportunities and incentives for avoidance by broadening the tax base while reducing the top rate (the 1986 tax reform). Both of these may have failed, but the solution is not to abandon the effort to tax the rich by adopting a consumption tax. It is always hard to persuade the majority to pay their taxes when it is perceived that the wealthy minority do not pay theirs. A commitment to progressivity in taxation is an important symbolic bulwark for the legitimacy of the tax system as a whole.