Taxation - I

If we consider the work of the tabernacle as solely religious and fail to see it as a religious-ecclesiastical as well as a religious-civil center, we conclude that the Old Covenant administration has nothing to teach us about taxation.  But if the tabernacle was central for understanding all of life because all of life is religious, then the home, the state, and the church find instruction from the tabernacle and we can see funding for them in what was brought there.

Rushdoony suggests that the poll tax (Ex 30:11-16) is the flat tax to provide for the civil needs of a society, while the tithe, an income tax based upon one's increase, is to provide for the ecclesiastical and social needs of a society (Institutes of Biblical Law, pp 281-2).  This could help a society grounded in submission to God's Word recieve direction in determining what kinds of taxation are biblical and right.

There is much more on this - even in just the few pages Rushdoony deals with it, and I am sure many others have expounded on it elsewhere.