Taxes are a compulsory contribution to the revenue of your governing body or bodies as the case may be (country, province, city, municipality and so on)

The government, regardless of type, i.e., democratic, autocratic or even royalty , enforces the compulsory part through consequences.  These can range from fines to incarceration.

I wonder if the contributions would continue without the consequences.  If your taxes purchase something of value to you, the consequences should be irrelevant.

Spending Money

To a greater degree (more than half but not by much) most of us choose what to spend our money on.  There is a direct correlation between the expenditure and our perception of value.

Whether you are paying for a road or to build a jail to house people you fear, or whom don’t behave according to expectations,  if you perceive these expenditures of value, consequences are not required. You will contribute.

Accountability

The troubling aspect of taxation centres around who controls what the revenues are used for.  Consequences are needed as an incentive to pay because their is no direct correlation between what you put in and what is received in return.

It would be an interesting but highly difficult exercise to calculate what your tax contribution was actually used for in any given year.

Compiling the contribution of the populations provides scale theoretically improving the efficiency and effectiveness of each individuals contribution.

That is, in theory, if you paid directly for all the services you receive from governments directly instead of cooperatively you would pay more to get less.

In practical fact,  if you were accountable for the spending and so only paid for what you wanted, you might get less things and pay more but overall considering all the things you pay for now but don’t actually need or want, you would probably be better off.