It’s a taxing week. Monday was the national tax-free day. So called, because, on average, whatever money you made up until that point essentially goes toward taxes.
Of course, this isn’t to be taken literally. Of course, all of your money for the past three months hasn’t gone toward taxes. What it means, however, is that this year a little more than a fourth of most Americans’ incomes will go toward paying taxes.
As brutal as this sounds, it is reportedly the earliest tax-free date in several years, meaning most Americans will pay less taxes this year than in past years.
Still, many Americans across the nation and here at home won’t feel good about that news today, April 15, the day the Internal Revenue Service expects to either have already received or for you to have a postmark on your annual taxes.
The prophets warned Caesar to beware the Ides of March (March 15), but most Americans shiver at the mention of the Ides of April. As other prophets have assured, only two things are certain: Death and taxes. The Ides of March assured Caesar’s death, and the Ides of April assures that we’ll be paying taxes up to and beyond our own final days.
Yet, it seems taxes have always been with us as well as people’s resentment to paying them. Think of the scorn reserved for the biblical tax-collector Zachias. Even 2,000 years later, Sunday school children still sing of him as a “wee little man, and a wee little man was he,” as he climbs up into that old sycamore tree to see what he can see.
Tax resentment is a staple of our nation’s birth with the colonial protest of “Taxation Without Representation.” The American colonies paid taxes but had no voice in British Parliament. A tax increase led to the protest of the Boston Tea Party where a group of colonists disguised as Indians invaded British ships and dumped tea into Boston harbor.
Though we now have representation, taxation still vexes most Americans. And it is this government representation that is blamed for most taxation.
Like groups across the country, Valdosta-Lowndes County hosts two Tax Day Tea Parties today. One is from noon-2 p.m., Mathis City Auditorium, the other from 6:30-8 p.m., parking lot of Valdosta City Hall. These parties are to protest “run-away government spending.” Politicians are welcome to come, but are asked to listen, not speak.
Perhaps these events should have a rallying cry of No Taxation With Only Mute Representation. Or perhaps not.
Despite such protests, at the end of the day, the old adage about the certainty of death and taxes will remain true.
Maybe that should be updated to the certainty of three things: death, taxes, and the resentment of paying taxes.
