Personally, I like Auto Taunts. I actually like it in 99 better - not only were there better voices (Less, sure, but better) but YOU COULD HEAR OTHER PEOPLE TAUNTING. In 2k4 (I don't remember if it's 2k3 as well) you only hear Autotaunts in two situations:
1) You kill someone.
2) Someone kills you.
In Instant Action, though, you can hear the bots taunt freely, and believe it or not we've even had questions on how frequent the taunts would be for UTR.
My verdict: If you want to turn them off, do so, but don't nerf it for everyone else who thinks taunts are part of the game. Though you should have the option to be able to turn them all off for you, locally (That is, you still taunt other players and they do to you - but since you muted them, you don't hear either) or individuals (because some people DO spam taunts.)