Except in a few stray passages from this period, Marx never conceptualized tax as the material basis of the connection between state and civil society, the form of revenue characteristic of this relationship. The upshot of what he did have to say was that taxes on capitalists would be of no benefit to workers:

The level of wages expressed, not in terms of money, but in terms of the means of subsistence necessary to the working man, that is the level of real, not nominal wages, depends on the relationship between demand and supply. An alteration in the mode of taxation may cause a momentary disturbance, but will not change anything in the long run.

Marx’s Ricardian conception of real wages as permanently fixed at near the bare subsistence level ruled out anything but defensive struggles to keep wages from sinking below the subsistence minimum. Even if the powers that be were so inclined, the state could do nothing against this iron law except provide some measure of poor relief. [...]