One Nation, With Liberty and Tax Responsibility For All

“The expenses of government, having for their object the interest of all, should be born by everyone, and the more a man enjoys the advantages of society, the more he ought to hold himself honored in contributing to those expenses.”    --Anne Robert Jacques Turgot

Tax Freedom Day. Tax Deadline Day. This year both of those days fell on the same date in Massachusetts: April 16th, 2019.  Tuesday.

Tax Freedom Day is a "holiday" invented by the Tax Foundation, an anti-tax Washington, D.C. based think tank and lobbying group. According to the foundation, April 16th was the day when Americans worked long enough in the year to have met their total tax bills. Tax Deadline Day is, of course, the day we Americans are supposed to file our state and federal taxes. This year it fell on the 16th because of the Patriots Day holiday in Massachusetts.

So in honor of these two competing days, let's consider some facts about Americans and taxes. The Tax Foundation reports that in 2019, Americans will pay $3.4 trillion in federal taxes and $1.2 trillion in state and local taxes, for a combined tax obligation of $5.2 trillion. That's 29 percent of the nation's income, a lot of money.

A lot to pay and so I do no victory dance as I walk into the post office each April to mail out my tax returns. Like most Americans I get frustrated with how the government can waste my tax dollars. Taxes take a good bite out of the pay I take home every week from the salary I earn as a minister. Taxes mean I have less to spend on the needs and wants of my life: food, shelter, health care, transportation, and entertainment. It would be easy for me to be automatically anti-tax like millions of my fellow citizens, like most Americans and the politicians who lead us. 

What legislator has the guts or chutzpah to get up in public and declare how much he or she love taxes? Not one I've ever seen. Give any pol the chance to rail against taxes and we will applaud them and then definitely vote for them. The fact that America was born out of a tax rebellion makes our anti-tax sentiment a part of our civic bones.

And yet, I still can't envision my life or our shared lives without taxes, can you?

Think about it: a tax free country. Yahoo!! Right? But what would America’s civic life be tax-less? No state or federal income taxes. No property taxes.  No sales taxes.  No gas tax. No Social Security payroll taxes or Medicare taxes or capitol gains taxes or inheritance taxes.  No obligation to financially contribute to the common good, a greater commonwealth, common defense for safety and security, a compassionate cushion for the old and the infirmed and the poor, equal opportunity for those who need an education.

Makes me wonder what my late Dad might have to say about this, he who was cared for by Medicare, earned his MBA through the GI Bill, and secured a low rate mortgage with the Veterans Administration?  Or my grandfather who lived in a federally subsidized senior housing complex and collected Social Security every month.  Or a single Mom friend of mine whose children were temporarily covered by Mass Health after a messy and costly divorce.  Or the developmentally disabled young man who bags my groceries and lives in a state funded group home. Or even me, who enjoyed a world class education at the University of Massachusetts, supported by my fellow Massachusetts taxpayers. Thank you, by the way!

Call me wacky or a socialist or even un-American but I truly believe that paying taxes is in fact patriotic. As citizens it is our duty, like voting or serving in the military when and if the call goes out. Taxes remind us we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves: a town or city, a state, a nation and some of the price we pay for this is paying our fair share of taxes.      

Taxes remind me of the most basic lesson I learn in my religious faith.  By living in a community I have an ethical and moral obligation to give up some of what I have to ensure that others might not go without.  Who I am as a relatively wealthy person makes me directly responsible to care for the least of these, my brothers and sisters. This is what paying taxes means to me.

Tax Freedom Day or Tax Responsibility Day? A taxing choice to be sure.

What will it be?