Some people resent paying taxes but I don't. I get money back. It's my money for sure, held in a kind of escrow, but nevertheless money in a lump sum (not much) that I can do something with.
In fact, I'm really careless about the money I'm entitled to get back. Recently I learned we had been due a refund several years ago but didn't get it and didn't realize I hadn't gotten it. This came to light when the IRS asked to see our back returns again and sent a belated check. We held onto that check until we talked to the bank about our deposits for that year because, well, using the money would be less pleasant than having to get it together again to send back would be painful.
Still who doesn't dread the chore of tax filing. I can remember collecting forms at the library, one of every kind because I didn't know which I'd need. We had kids in school, loans, deductions, all so complicated, and the papers that certified this or that, or had some special number, were always hard to lay hands on, if not already discarded. Oh, the long perplexed discussions over the meanings of official stipulations. When finally we inked in the forms, assembled all the supporting information, shoved everything (paper clipped, not stapled) into a heavy duty envelope, and bought the extra postage necessary to get it to Andover, we felt like we had performed a complicated religious ritual necessary perhaps to ensure rain or game for the year. We weren't quite sure if all the gestures had been done exactly as they needed to be, but we would find out later when the harvest or the hunting results started to come in.
Things are very different now. Yes, our finances are less complicated now, but when we sat down this Sunday morning to finally tell the government how much we felt they should keep of what we'd sent them, it was still a surprise that the process was virtually glitch-free. Rain. It was raining steadily outside, setting the proper mood for the exercise. The IRS.gov web site sent those of us making less than a certain amount to the left and those making more to the right. Were we the sheep? Were we the goats?
We had to chose a private on-line tax preparer and let it prompt us through the federal tax process. What's this? and we moved seamlessly into state tax filling. Okay, why not? Some health certificate confusion finally resolved and a bill turned into a refund. Great. Send feds off. Whoosh. Send state off--uh-oh--feds are free, state not so. Hooked. Filing is for nothing at the state site but the username and passwords we thought we had saved proved useless. Swallow the pill. Pay to send. Done.
But who or what is this Other that we confront each spring with propitiatory rites, the sacred Kabuki of giving, pleading and getting back?
It is said, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.."
I feel something akin as I go through the sacral motions.
Neither the IRS, nor the government, is divine. Though very strong, they are clearly often limited in their potency, frustrated in their aims, mixed in their motives. If it is the man behind the curtain, pay no attention, we have in fact invested the him with real power to carry out our collective wishes, to act on our collective behalf. If we decide he should do things differently, we can politically order it so, at least theoretically.
So when I did pay my taxes yesterday, was I encountering, in some form, the assembly of all my fellow citizens? I meet a sample of them every day, but the tax experience relates to all of them as a corporate entity, something more impressive, and yet less substantial in some ways, than any individual. We are not a nation of blood, nor divine election, but of deliberate decision. The founding fathers expressed a kind of awe at what they had called into being. I feel that sometimes when I vote. Perhaps a whiff of it attaches even to my annual consenting to contribute to the common good which is, when I step back to contemplate it, something grand.
No comments:
Post a Comment