Barbara Crafton on Taxes

After Q picked me up at the train station, we took our tax returns to the post office. Then we celebrated the event in town with a predictable pair of ice cream cones -- Q is always chocolate and I am always vanilla. The result, of course, is that neither of us is in the market for supper this evening. Ah, well -- tomorrow is another day.

Like voting, paying taxes is something a citizen just does. I have never understood why hostility towards the income tax is such a crowd-pleaser, as if money were being taken away from us. Nothing is taken from us when we are taxed; we're simply pooling some of our money in order to do the big things a complex society needs and wants. I feel about taxes as I do about the church tithe: why wouldn't I want to support something I care deeply about? Who but we ourselves should pay for the costly benefits we enjoy?

We are not alone in the world. We live in community -- those of us who celebrate that fact and those who wish it were not so, all of us together, like it or not. We depend on each other for our very lives, and we would not be who we are without each other. So my country has made me, just as my church has made me. I may disagree with this or that decision taken in the corridors of their power, but I can never divorce myself from them.

The privilege of paying taxes hurts; this year it hurt a lot. That's all right, though: paying it gives us skin in the game. It gives us a chance to show that our money is where our mouth is, that love of neighbor is more than a nice feeling. We pay these taxes all together, all at the same time of year, and we elect the government that spends them. May God make us worthy of each other's considerable investment.

No Man is an Island
No man is an island, entire of itself every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls it tolls for thee.
-- John Donne