It’s a manipulation tool to force companies to do what they want

It’s a game to distract you and to make pretend

to obfuscate the real business model #brrr

Taxes are income from the population, printing money creates inflation, where collecting money on already printed money doesn’t create inflation.

To prevent the system from overheating too fast

levers of control

they dont want you to work without their say so

A number of good answers here. I'll add a great line from Doug Wilson:

"You get more of what you subsidize and less of what you penalize."

Taxation is a huge lever for driving incentives.