...segue from conspiracy theory?...

Just how good a defense is it to say that you were paying taxes under duress?  Can such an argument always relieve you of all responsibility, or does it only work when certain conditions are met, or only relieve you of a certain amount of responsibility?

William Lloyd Garrison said at one point that willingly paying taxes to a government that upholds slavery was wrong, but that to acquit yourself it is sufficient to announce that you are not cooperating willingly, and to strike an attitude that is consonant with that declaration:

[One] may consent peaceably to yield up what is demanded of him, but not without remonstrance, and only as he would give up his purse to a highwayman. He will not recognize it as a lawful tax—he will not pay it as a tax—but will denounce it as robbery and oppression.

Tolstoy agreed, emphasizing that although it was wrong to voluntarily pay taxes, under the Christian non-resistance principle that he (and Garrison) adhered to, it was also wrong to resist the government in seizing taxes:

A religious man may not resist by force those who take any of the fruits of his labour— whether they be private robbers or robbers that are called “the Government”...

But J.G. James argued (in the context of nonconformists protesting government support for particular religious teachings) against such a form of passive tax resistance by saying:

It may well be questioned if the payment of rates or taxes is voluntary at all, since the account is presented in the form of a demand, and not a polite request. Inasmuch as payment is compulsory in any case, is not Passive Resistance merely an awkward, expensive, and an inconvenient mode of payment for all concerned?

It's easy to confuse the two cases, 1) in which someone actually forces you to do something (such as forcing you to stay in prison by locking the doors), and 2) in which someone threatens you with unpleasant consequences if you do not do something.  In the first case, you don't have alternatives to choose from, so you don't have any blame for what you're stuck with.  In the second case, though, your options have merely been changed.  You still have a choice to make.  Hannah Arendt wrote:

...in the words of Mary McCarthy, who first spotted this fallacy: “If somebody points a gun at you and says, ‘Kill your friend or I will kill you,’ he is tempting you, that is all.”  And while a temptation where one’s life is at stake may be a legal excuse for a crime, it certainly is not a moral justification.

If the tax collector says "give me your money or else," that isn't the end of the inquiry, but the time to say "or else what?" and then to weigh the options.  If I believed FSK's argument that what the tax collector was saying was "be directly responsible for every bad thing government does or else" I'd be asking my "or else what?" with bluff-calling incredulity.

segue to about chiquita?

segue to Caesar's fault?

see also: compulsion