When you steal from me you are going to use the windfall for entirely self interested purposes.
When the state takes money from me through taxation I will concede that they are going to spend the money on some things I do not agree with.
But they are also going to spend some of the money on roads and schools and services that, though possibly wasteful and possibly corrupt to some degree, it does not serve the interests of just one person and I am not without benefit from it to some extent.
Personal theft leave the victim 100% worse off and 0% better.
The tax payer at least gets a say in the matter and gets some benefit.
Apples and oranges, the comparison on it's face is absurd.
The comparison is accurate. You are wrong, both logically and morally.
What is absurd is the way people have been trained to excuse theft by some people while condemning theft by others.
What you have done is put forth a utilitarian argument to attempt to justify a kind of behavior (the theft backed by force) that is somehow wrong when some people do it and right when others do it, which is of course absurd.
The deceit is obvious, your cognitive dissonance is strong Luke. (Darth Vader voice)
Even if the state sometimes uses the proceeds of a theft to do things that people value or things that are "good", it is irrelevant.
IF the actions taken by the thief after the theft were somehow a justification of the theft, that would mean you or I could steal all of Uncle Bucks Gerbils, stand out in front of Wendy's and give them away to poor kids who'd love a pet. The smiling faces of the poor kids petting "their" new gerbils, doesn't make the gerbils no longer Uncle Bucks gerbils. They still belong to him as the rightful owner even if by stealing them from him, you've somehow made somebody else happier. The only way you can transfer ownership of something in a logical and morally valid way is thru a voluntary transfer AGREED TO BY BOTH parties.
Any goods and services that are derived thru theft cannot be justified as the means is corrupt. Besides in a free market (the real kind, not the crony bullshit kind of free market) you can have the goods and services that people want, without the theft. So why tolerate theft and call it something else when your master does it slave?
