That is exactly what happened, when France and other foreign governments sought to exchange the dollars they held for gold. So Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard.
Ever since, the dollar has been a fiat currency. It means dollars do not represent, and are not constrained by, any physical commodity or any external "real" money-thing whatsoever. A dollar represents itself; it is exchangeable for (besides goods and services) a dollar. That dollar, which is nothing more than a number in an account ledger, is the real money.
And it doesn't come from taxpayers. A dollar is now created on the command, by a political decision, of the public authority--a decision to spend. Money is created when the Congress says: "the following sums are appropriated," thereby commanding the Treasury to issue the dollars to make it so. The federal government creates dollars by spending them, by putting them into--which means marking up the numbers in--the accounts of individual citizens and businesses.
A fiat dollar in the modern monetary system is thus a social and political thing at its inception, and all the way through. When you trace money back to its origin, you do not arrive at a private, individual "taxpayer" who "earned" it, you arrive at a public, political authority that decided to create it. The source of the dollar is not a person; it's a decision. It's not an individual entity but a social act. That is precisely the fact that Thatcher & Co do not want you to see. But when you think through the logic of fiat money for a few minutes, you'll realize that it is a fact. Kinda obvious, really. It just is so.
"Taxpayers" and taxpaying are products and effects of this thoroughly social monetary system, not its source. The federal government (including here, subsidiarily and differentially, its delegated agents, the banks) is the only creator/issuer of the dollar. Persons and businesses can get money from each other in various ways--working, earning, borrowing, stealing, profiting, etc.--and the differences among them are important, but none of those social actors create the dollars that are being passed around.
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