this Sunday, 4/11 at 10:30 am)
As
April 15 approaches, I am counting the blessings that I receive as a
result of paying my taxes. The long list of bargain benefits makes a
lot lighter the work it takes to fill out the forms. It more than
redeems the labor represented by my payments. There is no way, other
than paying hefty taxes, for me to get the even heftier services that
come to me in return.
To
start the list, there is the IRS itself, a marvel of fund-raising
efficiency in providing for the common good. For all the hype about
how private charity is more effective than government, nothing could be
further from the truth. Typically, double-digit percentages of the
money donated to charity are expended on fundraising. But the
percentage of administrative cost relative to money collected by the
IRS is a half of a percent. No business, no non-profit, no church, no
synagogue in the country can match this level of efficiency. More
than any other way I spend my money, my tax dollars are being spent on
services more than on extracting the money to pay for those services.
Then there are
the myriad positive consequences that I get from paying taxes. Sewers,
schools, roads, defense forces, public health agencies, regulation of
food, drugs, and banks, airports, seaports, police, firefighters,
protection of wild lands, pollution control, health care, income
support and housing for the poor and disabled. None of this could be
provided for me effectively on the private market. There is no other
way that my money could come close to stretching as far as my tax
dollars reach in meeting these needs. Almost all these public
expenditures benefit me in some significant way. And some of the
indirect benefits are even more important to me than the direct ones.
Government aid to low-income people protects me, because my quality of
life would be much, much lower if I was surrounded every day by masses
of starving people on the streets. I’m protected from deadly epidemics
when low-income children get tax-funded health care. I’m served at
businesses by people who can read and write because I paid taxes to
educate them. I can drive hundreds of miles to visit family in just a
few hours because my taxes paid for the roads.
The
list of good things I receive from my taxes is much longer than I
know. A fellow member of my church is paid by my tax dollars to
protect critical infrastructure, such as dams and electric grids, from
natural disasters and terrorism. I didn’t even know there was such a
government job before I met him. But when he told me what he did for a
living, it was one more occasion to feel good about paying my taxes.
So
far, I’ve put the blessings that come from my tax payments only in
terms of my selfish interests. I’ve only bragged about how good a
deal I am getting on April 15. But surely I’m doing good for other
people when I sign the forms and mail the envelopes next week. Their
taxes help me, and my taxes help them. Not only am I helping myself a
lot when I send in my tax money, I am fulfilling a moral obligation to
serve people whose needs are greater than my own. I pay more than
lower-income people, and that is the way it ought to be. And those who
make a lot more money rightly pay a higher percentage of income in
taxes. The greater the wealth we receive beyond the basic needs of
life, the higher is our relative burden of social responsibility.
I
feel as good about paying taxes as I feel about paying my church
pledge. All the more reason that this coming Sunday, in worship, we
will be blessing our IRS forms, just as we bless our offerings to our church. Thank God for all
the good things we do for each
other through our government, and God bless the taxes we send to pay for them!